The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual

This is the book that started the market conversation on technology in the evolving world of marketing and business. The Cluetrain Manifesto helped define the concepts behind conversation marketing.

This book was originally published in 2000, when the potential of the Internet was becoming apparent to many traditional businesses and managers. At that time, many were seeing the Internet as replacing traditional markets (at least in some areas) and millions were starting to explore the knowledge potential. Smart search engines were starting to reshape the way in which many of us obtained instant information. That was at the end of last century: is this book still relevant today? Yes, and no. For many of us, world-wide connectivity is still new enough that we have not fully embraced the rules of engagement For others, unfamiliar with a different way of doing business, much of what is written in this book will seem obvious and self-evident. But is it? Much of this book is about the conversations that occur continuously in the virtual world. The spontaneity of these conversations; their breadth and instantaneous coverage is now a given. Good news and bad is disseminated instantly. Product recommendations (good and bad) can be published by anyone with an Internet connection. Of course, not all aspects of these instant connections are good. The virtual world has its own demons. I reread this book to remind myself of where we were a decade ago (or last century, if you prefer). I also wanted to check whether the potential of so many interconnected conversations was becoming reality. My answer (there are surely others) is yes. The conversations of connectedness are changing both the business we do and the way in which we do it. Is it still worth reading, or rereading, this book? Yes. Perhaps the ideas could have been condensed for easier digestion, but there is something in the enthusiasm of the delivery that is also part of the message. Jennifer Cameron-Smith

The Cluetrain Manifesto was originally hosted as a website by four employees who respectively worked at IBM, Sun Microsystems, the Linux Journal, and National Public Radio (NPR). These four IT and social experts wrote "The Cluetrain Manifesto: the end of business as usual" and created a paradigm shift in the way businesses view customers, ecommerce and the Internet. Authors Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger convincingly illustrate that the freedom of expression provided by the Internet will force businesses to listen and conversate with customers on a real level or face business extinction. The book contains a list of 95 theses. Below are my favorite 10 from the list: 1. Markets are conversations 2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors 7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy 12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone 18. Companies that don't realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity 24. Bombastic boasts - "We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ" - do not constitute a position 50. Today, the org. chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority 60. Markets want to talk to companies 74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it. 75. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change. The heiarchical mass marketing mediums like TV ads, billboards, and planted Press Releases are rendered virtually useless because customers don't want to be interrupted and they no longer believe in a one-way business conversation. Customers can compare prices across tens of thousands of stores with a click of a mouse. User feedback and peer reviews speak truth to corporation's product and service quality claims. And activist groups are creating tribes of followers to challenge the PR statements written by tenured media relations experts. The book encourages companies to allow employees at all levels to speak openly with customers, answer questions and personally respond to issues and complaints on blogs, email and forums. The authors contend that the traditional command and control management of employees that restricts open employee interaction with customers will ruin a company in the post web 2.0 world. The Cluetrain Manifesto is guide for doing business in a world with thousands of collaborative social platforms in existence today and will exponentially grow tomorrow. I personally attended Church with Doc Searls, before Dr. Searls moved to teach at Harvard, and heard Doc share that 'markets are conversations'.

Over the last several years, I've come to the conclusion that "business-as-usual" had to come to an end--that the world, culture, technology have changed so much that a new business paradigm is not only required but desperately needed. And it can't be simply a change of rules--the entire *game* has to change.So finding the on-line Cluetrain Manifesto last year was a real pleasure. Here were these four guys with 95 wild-eyed idealistic theses for overthrowing the business world order--and setting up a new paradigm based upon (of all things) human interaction and conversation. I signed right up.So you can imagine my delight when I found "The Cluetrain Manifesto" book had been published. I bought it in a millisecond.Inside, you'll find the reflections of the Cluetrain's originators--in more detail, with more reflection than their Website provides. The Manifesto's background and philosophies are brought into a clearer focus--*not* crystal clear, mind you, but clearer than before. And it's a *very* enjoyable and provocative read.It's not a flawless work. There's redundancy, for example, in the multiple essays within. Some chapters (Chapter 1 especially) are outstanding, others are so-so. One might even be called elementary. But there's always food for thought.And don't expect to find some kind of "formula" or "strategy" or "plan" to prosper in the brave new world we live in. It's not there. In fact, such a plan, the authors remind us, would be *counter* to the Manifesto's assertion that honest human conversation is the key to success in the future.But you will be stirred to find your voice and to add it to the voices of the revived marketplace called the Internet. Heck, you might even be inspired enough to try to help your company find *its* honest, human, authentic voice (rather than brochureware and doublespeak). And I think that's what would delight the Cluetrainers most.This book is one of several that dramatically affected my life and career. I heartily recommend it!

I recently received a letter from a company that sells software for "personalizing" consumers' online shopping experiences that illustrates why the world needs The Cluetrain Manifesto, an extraordinary polemic against the dehumanizing practices of business.Although I don't have an ecommerce site, the exhibitor's letter began, "By now you have had time to evaluate your Internet sales numbers from last quarter and hopefully you met and beat them." The letter was insulting by violating simple etiquette and unauthentic because it showed total ignorance of my business. The letter began "Dear David." Can't you hear Andy Rooney saying, "Does it ever bother you when people you've never met, and aren't sure you want to know call you by your first name right off the bat?" The letter writer thinks that using first names personalizes a letter. But first names are properly an acknowledgment of personhood. I'm not a person to that letter writer. I'm just a string of 0's and 1's in his database. I'm no more a real person to him than are website visitors analyzed by his company's personalization software. This company doesn't know what personalization is about. Its shtick is depersonalization, a corporate perversity The Cluetrain Manifesto rails against.Cluetrain is the product of marketing specialists Rick Levine, Chris Locke, Doc Searles and David Weinberger who posted 95 theses on the virtual doors of the Internet, indicting the corporate world for exercising unforgivable arrogance in the marketplace, and suddenly were getting thousands of hits daily. Perseus Books quickly came up with a handsome offer for Cluetrain, the book. These putative Four Horsemen of the Internet Apocalypse that will lay flat the walls of the Old Economy declare that business no longer controls the marketplace. Their Sixth Thesis counsels "The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media," then business is warned by the Seventh Thesis: "Hyperlinks destroy hierarchy." Hierarchies rank people and restrict information flow because information access is a function of rank. Hyperlinks democratize information flow, nullifying the main offensive weapon that hierarchies depend on to remain hierarchies. Most leaders in Old Economy hierarchies see the Internet as just a new product distribution channel. They don't realize that the Internet is a new conversation channel that greatly amplifies the voices in the marketplace. As Cluetrain's First Thesis states, "Markets are conversations." If you're tenaciously anchored to the Old Economy, the First Thesis's real meaning might not click in at first. But work at it. Make it the opening topic of your next staff meeting. With persistence, you'll see what it means. Suddenly you'll find yourself at the gateway to a much different world, kind of like when Dorothy stood in the ordinariness of her tornado-tossed black and white Kansan house an