Cluetrain Manifesto Review

The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger was excellent!

With the "speed of business" ever increasing, and the world ever flattening, modern businesses need to change the ways they reach their customers. The Cluetrain Manifesto will force you, whether you like it or not, to accept the idea that the internet is changing marketing. Further it explains the critical mistake that "old" companies are making by using the internet as only a tool for pushing their messages, and not for accepting feedback.

The book starts with an excellent foreward from the authors, followed by a 95 item manifesto which is a rapid fire executive summary of the points in the book. Essentially they are one liners from the voice of a customer/worker/peon to a corporation. A few of my favorite are after the jump...

• 7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy
• 15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business - the sound of mission statements and brochures - will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
• 78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.
• 95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

Pressing the mindset that more than ever before, customers can talk to each other, The Cluetrain Manifesto insists that don't get on board will die.

Besides being a very entertaining read from an interesting perspective, one can see the issues presented in the book happening everyday.

• GM continually made vanilla cars, not listening to their customers who for the last 20 years have been fleeting to more stylish Hondas, Nissans, and Toyotas. Now GM is on the verge of being the largest corporation to ever go bankrupt.


• Kryptonite brushed off reports about their bike locks being susceptible to theft using a simple pen. Their customers talked to each other, and the company's oh so valuable brand was dragged through the mud.


• Google requires that each of their engineers spend a portion of their on the job time every week working on a new project that makes them excited. Now Google is one of the fastest growing corporations on the market, and has a slew of new "products" coming out all the time.

If you are in business, read The Clutrain Manifesto.

If you blog, read The Cluetrain Manifesto.

If you like to read, read The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Get it? Good.