Two “tell all” books about the world’s biggest social networks will be published in 2009.
The first, set to be published on March 17, 2009, is Wall Street Journal editor Julia Angwin’s Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America (you can pre-order it here).
The second is Fortune Senior Editor David Kirkpatrick’s upcoming book on Facebook called The Facebook Effect. Kirkpatrick is still writing the book, which he announced in August.
From what we’ve heard, the two books won’t be very similar in their approach or tone. Angwin has been working on her book since early 2007, and probably waited way too long to finish it. Most of the interesting tidbits about MySpace have long ago been published. About half the book, we’ve heard, is dedicated to the ongoing troubles the company has had with Brad Greenspan, who also serves as the book’s primary source.
Don’t expect the same treatment from Kirkpatrick, who’s an awesome journalist but is rumored to be writing a “love affair of a book” about Facebook, according to one source.
Kirkpatrick has started a fan page on Facebook to chronicle the book writing effort. He’s also started blogging regularly on Facebook (the posts are about Facebook and are also hosted by Facebook). The early tone of these stories is…very, very positive.
Facebook is giving Kirkpatrick deep access to executives for the book, we’ve heard from sources. Which explains the overly-positive tone. According to a source at MySpace, Angwin had exactly zero access to MySpace executives for her book.
Books about current events are starting to make less and less sense. By the time they’re finished the stories in them are usually old news. That’s certainly the case with Angwin’s MySpace book. Perhaps Kirkpatrick will write a little more quickly.