Marketing maestro, Seth Godin has kindly made his latest ebook freely available. ‘Who’s There’ is an ‘Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web’ and is available for download here. At 45 pages (small ones) it’s easily accessible, covers definitions for the uninitiated and walks through some excellent blogging lessons.

It categorizes blogs into three types: cat blogs – which mainly revolve around personal blogging; boss blogs – which are used to communicate information from the top down; and viral blogs which aim to spread ideas. The book is about this last category and briefly lays out four laws for viral blogs, together with five components of great blogs (candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness and controversy):-

Short and sweet: If you can’t be at least four of the five things listed above, please don’t bother. People have a choice (4.5 million choices, in fact) and nobody is going to read your blog, link to your blog or quote your blog unless there’s something in it for them.