The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Christopher Locke (Author), Rick Levine (Author), Doc Searls (Author), David Weinberger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2000

Markets are conversations. Talk is cheap. Silence is fatal. "You must read the Cluetrain Manifest. So: read it , inhale it. If it pisses you off...GREAT" Tom Peters What if the real power of the Web lay not in the technology behind it, but in the profound changes it brings to the way people interact with business? And what if these changes were altering the nature of your company as profoundly as they have changed your markets? With language as sharp and compelling as its observations. www.cluetrain.com burst unexpectedly onto the scene with 95 Theses to ignite a vibrant and viral conversation, making hash of corporate assumptions about the nature of online business. Provocative, outrageous and wickedly smart, the manifesto has challenged executives from Global 1000 companies to sign-on or risk missing a genuine revolution. Expanding on ideas and insights first nailed up on the Web. The Cluetrain Manifesto both signals and explores a sea change already nearing flood tide in today's wired world. Through the Internet, people are discovering new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a result, markets are getting smarter than most companies. Whether management understands it or not, networked employees are an integral part of these borderless conversations. Today, customers and employees are communicating with each other in language that is natural, open, direct and often funny. Companies that aren't engaging in them are missing an unprecedented opportunity. A rich tapestry of anecdotes, object lessons, parodies, insights and predictions. The Cluetrain Manifesto illustrates how the Internet has radically reframed the "immutable laws" of business - and what business needs to know to weather the seismic aftershocks. "When people in networked markets can get faster and smarter information from one another than from the companies they do business with, it may be time to close shop. Or, maybe it's just time to get on The Cluetrain and fully understand that your customers are living, breathing creatures who want one-to-one relationships with your company, not just one-way rhetoric." Don Peppers, co-founder of Peppers and Rogers Group, and co-author of The One to One "For every consumer-products company wondering why its internet marketing doesn't seem to be working" Business Week "The most important business book since in Search of Excellence. Get a clue. Read the book"Information Week..." " Most marketing campaigns are based on the fear that the market might see what's really going on isnide the company. Sound familiar? If it does then you've already come across the Cluetrain Manifesto...If you haven't already then you should make it your business to do so...Until big brands embrace more of the Cluetrain thinking, the anti-capitalist rioters might just have a point." Campaign, August 2001

--This text refers to the Print on Demand (Paperback) edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How would you classify a book that begins with the salutation, "People of Earth..."? While the captains of industry might dismiss it as mere science fiction, The Cluetrain Manifesto is definitely of this day and age. Aiming squarely at the solar plexus of corporate America, authors Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger show how the Internet is turning business upside down. They proclaim that, thanks to conversations taking place on Web sites and message boards, and in e-mail and chat rooms, employees and customers alike have found voices that undermine the traditional command-and-control hierarchy that organizes most corporate marketing groups. "Markets are conversations," the authors write, and those conversations are "getting smarter faster than most companies." In their view, the lowly customer service rep wields far more power and influence in today's marketplace than the well-oiled front office PR machine.

The Cluetrain Manifesto began as a Web site (www.cluetrain.com) in 1999 when the authors, who have worked variously at IBM, Sun Microsystems, the Linux Journal, and NPR, posted 95 theses that pronounced what they felt was the new reality of the networked marketplace. For example, thesis no. 2: "Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors"; thesis no. 20: "Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them"; thesis no. 62: "Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall"; thesis no. 74: "We are immune to advertising. Just forget it." The book enlarges on these themes through seven essays filled with dozens of stories and observations about how business gets done in America and how the Internet will change it all. While Cluetrain will strike many as loud and over the top, the message itself remains quite relevant and unique. This book is for anyone interested in the Internet and e-commerce, and is especially important for those businesses struggling to navigate the topography of the wired marketplace. All aboard! --Harry C. Edwards --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Experienced technology users with a history of communicating over the Web, Levine (Sun Guide to Webstyle), Locke (who has worked for MCI and IBM and written for such publications as Forbes), Searls (a senior editor at Linux Journal) and Weinberger (a regular commentator on NPR) want nothing less than to change the way the world does business. Commerce, they argue, should not be about transactions, it should be about conversations, no matter what the medium. The artifice that frequently accompanies buying and selling should be replaced by a genuine attempt to satisfy the needs, wants and desires of the people on both sides of the equation. Despite their long digressions, the authors occasionally succeed in making solid, clever points that reveal fundamental flaws in the structure of traditional businesses. Consider this comment about business hierarchies: "First they assume--along with Ayn Rand and poorly socialized adolescents--that the fundamental unit of life is the individual. This despite the evidence of our senses that individuals only emerge from groups." So far so good. But their apparent assumption that everyone in upper management, along with anyone who does not embrace every aspect of their utopian ideal, is a dolt may not be the best way to raise an army in support of their cause. Similarly, ignoring examples of companies that are already doing business differently--the magazines Inc. and Fast Company are filled with examples every month--and glossing over the specifics on how to implement their business model undercuts their credibility. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: Hardie Grant Books (December 31, 2000)
• ISBN-10: 0738204315
• ASIN: B0001OOTN4
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (153 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #462,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 76 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars One Great Thought Beat to Death 190 Times February 24, 2001

By Robert David STEELE Vivas HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

There is one great thought in this book, i.e. that the Web makes it possible for everyone to participate in the "great conversation", and that it is the summing and slicing of these conversations that will drive business in the 21st Century.

The authors are quite correct, and helpful, when they point out that in the aggregate, the combined preferences, insights, and purchasing power of all Web denizens is vastly more valuable and relevant to business decisions about production, quality, and services than any "push" marketing hype or engineering presumptions about what people might need.

Sadly, the authors' neither provide an integrated understanding of the true terrain over which the great conversation takes place, nor do they provide any substantive suggestions for how web content managers might improve our access to the knowledge and desires that are now buried within the web of babel. Their cute "tell a story" and equally cute advice to have big boxes for customer stories in the forms provided for input, simply do not cut it with me.

This book is a 5 for the one great idea, a 2 for beating the idea to death, a 3 for presentation, and a 4 overall because it was just good enough to keep me reading to the last page.

65 of 71 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A business book for people who don't like business books January 17, 2000

By Timothy W. Cunningham

Format:Hardcover

I don't much care for business books. But this one blows away the category. Business is, after all, not about dollars. It is about people. Dollars are simply a way to keep score. And what could be more human than conversations? The notion that markets are really conversations is so old it's new. The Cluetrain Manifesto shows how we humans lost our way accepting the command and control structure and format of modern business. We have been engaged in a one-way conversation, with companies doing all the talking, while most folks tuned out the message.

This book demonstrates how the Internet is bringing people back into the commercial process. Technology has frequently been perceived as dehumanizing our world. That's why it is especially ironic that it took a technological revolution in communication to bring back the human side of commerce. We are seeing a sea change where commerce is moving from a seller's market to a buyer's market.

Read this book. Pass it along to your boss. Give it to your employees and your customers. Buy copies for the heads of your engineering, marketing, manufacturing, corporate development, or whatever group. The brave new world is here, but Big Brother's not in charge. We are.

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Take a delivery from this Cluetrain--before it's too late! February 8, 2000

By David E. Rogers

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

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! Read more ›

64 of 71 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Cluetrain is Here! Recycle All Your Other Marketing Books January 28, 2000

By David B. Wolfe

Format:Hardcover

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 and first beheld the splendiferously colorful glory of Oz.

Cluetrain's authors are not wet-behind-the-ears webheads, but seasoned businessmen who grew tired of mass manipulation of people, and endless trickery, cajolery and even threats to get them to buy mass produced products thrust at them by generals of mass marketing in the "battle for their minds" as Al Reis and Jack Trout characterized marketing in a book called Marketing Warfare.

Here's a military metaphor for the clueless who still define marketing with military metaphors: Cluetrain's book jacket poses a question that penetrates the mind like a smart bomb burrowing into one of Saddam Hussein's subterranean bunkers: "What if the real power of the web lay not in the technology behind it, but in the profound changes it brings to the way people interact with business?"

Wow! There's a hint of Ted Kaczynski in that question, for as a society have we not become too obsessed with technology to see our humanity? Does this blinkered view make it easier for executives and managers to be as unaware of a receptionist's or entry level worker's humanity as the personalization company who wrote me that letter was of my humanity?

Cluetrain is written write with the ink of irony. Its authors aren't looking to start anything - no Naderesque foundation to squabble endlessly with corporations, no legally constituted organism to spread their message. All they want to do is to remind us all of our humanness in such a provocative manner that their lessons stick and grow to envelop the thinking of people who run companies and make marketing decisions.

Cluetrain's authors believe that as people regain an enlivened sense of their humanity through conversations made possible by the Internet, what ever is best that could happen will happen. They abhor the idea of shackling Cluetrain thoughts to a legal incarnation that would soon lose touch with humanity in order to promote itself and its leaders.

The Cluetrain Manifesto is a way of thinking that can lead businesses toward success in the unstructured environments of the Internet. Of course, many Old Economy business leaders want their Internet operations to have palpable structure like their bricks and mortar operations have, but they won't succeed. They are like Archimedes wistfully imagining that if only he had a place to stand he could move the earth. There is no place to stand for leveraging the Internet in ways that will give anyone control over its movements.

Cluetrain portends the end of control strategies in business. The Old Economy ethos of control is being replaced by a New Economy ethos of influence. This means The Cluetrain Manifesto instantly makes whole libraries of books on marketing obsolete because they are all based on an ethos of control and written from a vendor perspective. So empty your book shelves of all the covers you have on marketing and recycle them. That's their only value now. The Cluetrain Manifesto is the only book about markets that matters, because it is the first book on markets written from the consumer perspective. Buy it, read it, and be transformed!

David Wolfe Wolfe Resources Group Reston Virginia Read more ›