by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger
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| List Price: | $14.00 |
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| Lowest New Price: | $6.42 |
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Product Description
The Cluetrain Manifesto burst onto the scene in March 1999, with ninety-five theses nailed up on the Web. Within days, www.cluetrain.com had ignited a vibrant global conversation challenging sacred corporate assumptions about the very nature of business in a digital world. The Wall Street Journal called it “absolutely brilliant.” Soon, executives from Fortune 500 companies everywhere were lining up to sign-on to the Manifesto. This is the book that delivers on the buzz. The Cluetrain Manifesto is a wake-up call that says business as usual is gone forever. 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. Today’s markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny, and often shocking. Companies that aren’t listening to these exchanges are missing a dire warning. Companies that aren’t engaging in them are missing an unprecedented opportunity. The Cluetrain Manifesto is the culmination of this very real phenomenon. It shares powerful, firsthand experiences describing how Internet business differs radically from the corporate status quo. The fact is that employees are getting hyperlinked even as markets are. Companies need to listen carefully to both. Forget business as usual, The Cluetrain Manifesto marks the dawn of something bigger: Markets are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organizations These networked markets are conversations in which customers are intelligent human beings, not faceless demographic sectors Today, the organizational chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority Corporations must transform themselves into organizations that establish a genuine culture with a perspective, a personality, and a point of view Linking conversations inside the company to conversations in the marketplace will create enormous new value for companies that are clued-in.
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
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 180 pages too long...., 2008-10-17
I just finished reading this book, having checked it out from the library. I am glad I didn't buy it. I voraciously read business books, but this one was a chore, at best.
The first 105 pages could be easily condensed down into 1 page at most, and perhaps even a single paragraph or a few bullet points that explain the basic premise:
* The Internet will bypass any attempts at controlling your corporate message, so you might as well plan to talk to customers and allow them to talk with you.
* "The Market" is "Conversations", so you need to participate in the "conversation".
* Speak to customers in a "natural" voice, not corporate-speak.
That was the first half of the book, in a nutshell. The remainder basically reinforced this, with continued exhortations on how one must "join the conversation", speak in a "natural voice" because that's what "markets" demand.
I guess if you were the CEO or other top executive of a large firm, this book might be applicable. However, I am not. I am a sole proprietor who runs an internet retail operation. Perhaps I got so little out of it because I've already done what they're telling/advising folks to do, so much of it seems like a series of "well, duh!" internal comments.
The other thing I don't like about the book is that examples are very few, IMO. Where are the success stories, apart from a notable example of Saturn or United Airlines (I think that's the airline involved...could be wrong).
Overall, I'd say if you don't spend / haven't spent a lot of time on the Internet "conversing" (Internet forums, chat rooms, Usenet, etc.), then perhaps this book would be helpful. But I would advise to borrow it from your local library rather than buy it.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 The book is more entertainment than anything else, 2008-10-03
While there are some interesting points in this book, it seems that the authors have spent more energy on "sounding cool and fresh" than on writing a book that can give interesting thoughts and insights. It is very annoying when sometimes, page after page is filled with text that would fit more in a poem than in a book about business.
Furthermore, while the authors do have some interesting points, there is no valid research behind their thoughts. Basically, they have sat together and brainstormed some ideas, which they have then put in this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Wake-up Call, 2008-06-17
This book is a wake-up call for organizations that want to embrace the internet. It advocates an authentic approach toward communication, helping employees and customers find their "voice" so that we can all talk to each other in a more trustworthy manner.
Author, "Trust is Everything: Become the leader others will follow"
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
I love it!, 2008-05-02
This book is a bit dated, but remains more relevant than ever! Talks about the market shift from top-down consumer culture, to having market 'conversations.' You'll have to read the rest for yourself! I've recommended it to friends/coworkers, who all have thanked me as it is an eye-opener, if not the unheard cry they've been making all their life.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Still rocking after all these years!, 2008-04-15
Why review the Cluetrain after so much time has elapsed? Because we tend to get too caught up with the here and now and forget that we have only been on this journey a very short period of time. When we look back 10, 20, 30 years from now we (the collective we) will look back and point to the Cluetrain as marking a time when a major inflection point occurred. The Cluetrain did not cause the inflection point, it simply captured its essence.
Yeah, everyone now repeats the "markets are conversations" meme, but I suspect that few really understand what that means. Why? Because it is not a done deal. We are still trying to figure it out. It is early in Web years. We are still at the base of the mountain and nowhere near the summit. It pays to go back and revisit one of the earlier maps.
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