The cluetrain manifesto
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- The title of this article is incorrect because of technical limitations. The correct title is the cluetrain manifesto.
the cluetrain manifesto (spelled in all lowercase letters) is a World Wide Web site that evolved into a hardback book by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger and published by Perseus Books (ISBN 0738204315). The book's thesis is that the Internet is not a medium, but rather it is a means by which people are enabled to have human to human conversations.
The 'cluetrain manifesto website' highlights 95 theses that challenge what it calls out-moded, 20th-century thinking about business in light of the emergence of the Web, a reference to Martin Luther's posting of his theses to start the Protestant movement.
It takes its name from this quote on the cluetrain web site:
- "The clue train stopped there four times a day for ten years and they never took delivery." — Veteran of a firm now free-falling out of the Fortune 500
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The Main Idea of the 'cluetrain' theses
On the 'cluetrain' site itself a single paragraphs summarises the essential position taken by the writers:
- "A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies."
While this might seem a fair summary, it disguises the barrage of anti-corporate thinking of much of the manifesto which takes up almost half of the number of theses. On the other hand, it would seem that many of the allegations about corporate activity have some creedence and therefore warranted.
There is little doubt that the Internet has changed the way people communicate across the world, whether the world has been changed exactly as the 'cluetrain manifesto' charges is another things. There are certainly new ways of communicating, and in some cases businesses have benefited and in some others businesses have been hurt badly.
Whether human beings have gained the type of power ascribed to them when they talk human to human across the Internet is still to be proven. We do know some bloggers catch the limelight from time to time, just as the main proponents did with 'cluetrain' and perhaps they may be onto something, but not exactly as and what they stated in the manifesto.
Fundamental to the cluetrain manifesto was the premise that the internet provided a new and unique forum for communication that would ultimately shift the nature of business communication and marketing. Essentially, the change that is central to this text is one of breaking down corporate barriers and forming a conversation between those within and those outside a corporation -- online marketing would be more about conversations with people rather than tellin half-truths about products and services.
The authors of the manifesto suggested that such a shift would occur through substantial and pervasive changes in current company to consumer interaction. Communication would shift from mission statements and marketing media aimed at consumer segments to open dialogues or conversations between businesses and consumers.
The scale of change that the authors imagined in clearly hinted at in the release of the cluetrain manifesto as a printed publication. The publications subtitle - "The end of business as usual" - while conveying a hint of the internet mania prevalent through much of the late 1990s prior to the dot.com bust, does suggest how fundamentally the authors expected the internet's capabilities to alter existing business models.
In essence, the authors suggested that a lack of a "human voice" in much of corporate communication would dissolve and be replaced with real dialogue that was honest, open and linked people to people rather than consumers to business.
The authors provide a number of examples of how this communication would in fact occur. Many of these would now be recognised as Blogs, Instant Messenging and the ability of people to post views and reviews on products (as per Amazon.Com). All of this would occur via communication paths that the internet had opened and would, according to the authors, herald a fundamental shift away from the previous business paradigm.
Although much of what the cluetrain manifesto proposes has, in fact, occurred, it has failed to materialise to the extent that the authors had proposed. Marketing, in particular, has not changed as immediately as what is proposed. Although a number of companies have aimed to achieve customisation of marketing material to the point where it is tailored to a single individual, this remains a one-way dialogue which is the antithesis of what the authors propose as the ideal.
Opposition
During the height of the 'cluetrain Internet buzz' there were both supporters and opponents making their point online. The conversation spawned by 'the cluetrain manifesto' website, in some instances, was taken to be almost a religious faith to which one ascribed. Quite notably the technical oriented who were adept in building websites, writing blogs and making themselves heard on the Internet were often the most ardent adherents.
Even some of the opponents to the idea took the concepts of 'cluetrain' to be cultish. For example, John C. Dvorak in PC Magazine (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,43161,00.asp):
- ". . . the apparent faith in this odd vision of an idealistic human-oriented internetworked new world/new economy marches forward. I imagine all these folks holding hands in a large circle, rolling back and forth, with some in the middle of the circle, spinning and chanting and hugging, all naked. I'm betting that most of these folks go to Burning Man and all of them write blogs about it and how cool it was. They link to each others' blogs and read what they say about each other—all highly complimentary."
Opponents to the concept of 'cluetrain' point to the fact that the Internet cannot be so conceptualized so unitarily as "a conversation" or that the human activity online can be so neatly compacted into the notion of 'conversation'. It may be true that there are some conversations online, but rather, the Internet would seem that a better description of the Internet would be to identify it as a chaotic place with spam coursing through its veins, filters manipulating the viewing of websites, email, blogs and other forms of communication, noise, and some human voices being heard above the babble and confusion.
Obviously there are some companies that seem to be doing extremely well without recourse to enabling conversations on the Internet -- such as WalMart, for example. There are other companies that have paid attention to the cluetrain concept and taken up conversation online and are doing both extremely well and in some cases very poorly (such as Pay Pal as a poor Internet communicator).
Many business people have paid some attentionto 'cluetrain', such as Sun (http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/blogs/) starting blogged conversations online for each of their executives, but many also have completely rejected the notion and continued with their TV-industrial ways.
Related work
A website which attempts to embrace (and perhaps extend) at least some of the 'cluetrain vision' is Microsoft's Channel9. The introduction to Channel9 states:
- Welcome to Channel 9. We are five guys at Microsoft who want a new level of communication between Microsoft and developers. We believe that we will all benefit from a little dialogue these days. This is our first attempt to move beyond the newsgroup, the blog, and the press release to talk with each other, human to human.
Some may interpret this activity of Microsoft employees as moving on from blogging and website writing -- others see Channel9 as a highly regulated site stifling the human voice, even though it is meant to be allowing humans talk to humans. Some would allege that Channel9 is perhaps another corporate con.
While not exactly on this topic Purple cow has some similarities in terms of how marketing is to be done in this era of the Internet.
External links
- Cluetrain web site (http://www.cluetrain.com/)
- Cult of the Cluetrain Manifesto (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,43161,00.asp) - a viewpoint questioning the cluetrain manifesto and its application
- Cluetrain Buzz (http://www.cluetrain.com/buzz.html)
- the cluetrain manifesto (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738204315/qid=1116993064/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-2484193-4358307) - book at Amazon.com.
- Aussie NetSuite Blog (http://aussienetsuiteblog.typepad.com/) - example of a company endeavouring to practically converse with its customers.
- The Cluetrain Local 599 (http://www.fullcirc.com/community/localclue.htm) - an interpretation of cluetrain manifesto for people on a local level.
- Catching a clue from the cluetrain manifesto (http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/000152.php) - an interpretation of its meaning to people in arts organizations.
- Deanna on the cluetrain manifesto (http://deanna612.blogspot.com/2005/03/we-die-cluetrain-manifesto.html) - at the time one of the many hundreds of blogs on the topic.