Tancer searches deep inside the massive database of online intelligence to reveal the naked truth and unexpected insights about how people use the Web, navigate to sites, and search for information--and what that says about individuals and their buying habits.

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Data is the new black

Bill Tancer loves data, and he's not ashamed to say so. The Time.com columnist and manager of global research at Hitwise, a competitive intelligence company, is passionate about his work: he monitors and analyzes online behavior in search of clues, trends and patterns that can help companies understand their customers. Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why it Matters has real-life examples aplenty drawn from Tancer's work at Hitwise, plus anecdotes that detail his experiences as a speaker and/or attendee at various conferences and trade shows, where he encounters all manner of data aficionados. He offers interesting, odd statistics (more than 20 percent of all inbox spam is related to Viagra; online searches for "prom dress" peak in January, contrary to the April or May surge one would expect) and shares the details of his quests to understand these phenomena. Tancer believes "we can learn more about ourselves through our Internet behavior," and his enthusiasm for data-modeling is infectious. (Really.) Here's a bit of data-modeling: readers who liked Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point will enjoy this book, too.