Cluetrain Manifesto

In my MS-Marketing social media course, we have been talking about web 2.0 and the changes that have occurred to make the web a 2-way conversation instead of just an information seeking tool. In studying this phenomenon, we read The Cluetrain Manifesto by Levine, Locke, Seerls, and Weinberger. This book was published in 2000 and is essentially a prediction of the future of web interactions. Talk about a spark of brilliance! These individuals were able to predict consumer driven content in a time that most of us were still "dialing up" to look up information.

I had to really think back about how I used the web in 2000. I was a junior in high school and it seems as though it was about the time that music sharing really hit it big with Napster. I also recall waiting forever for something to download via the dial up connection. This was years before Facebook and MySpace were created and I stand in awe of the predictions that the authors of Cluetrain announced at this early period of web 1.o.

They seemed to base their ideas on the fact that "business, at bottom, is fundamentally human" (L82) and "they will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf" (L138). They knew that businesses needed to make themselves relatable and that consumers needed to feel like they were in control of the information they chose to receive and were also able to share their opinions with other consumers. All of these predictions have come true. The authors of Cluetrain still feel like the web has a ways to go. They foresee consumers leading the search for what they want and being in complete control. This will also actually benefit advertisers since it "is still a guesswork game, and guesswork means waste" (20).

These four authors were willing to put out into the world their ideas for where the web would lead. They hit a homerun! I think when you realize the spark of idea might catch and change into something more, it is vital to discuss it with community and allow the insight of others to push ideas forward. The work of these four individuals is brilliant and began with a couple of insights that they saw in the way the web was initially created and the needs of consumers that had been yet unmet. Amazing and inspiring! I can't wait to see where we go from Web 2.0.

Notations were made from the Kindle Version of The Cluetrain Manifesto: 10th Anniversary Edition available here: http://www.amazon.com/Cluetrain-Manifesto-10th-Anniversary-ebook/dp/B002EF2AE8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1321210906&sr=1-1