The Cluetrain Manifesto
by By Levine, Rick (EDT), Searls, Doc, Weinberger, David, and Locke, Christopher
Category: Social Science , General

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.