The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business As Usual [Hardcover]

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

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.

Beginning as 95 posted theses in March 1999, the Cluetrain Manifesto (http://www. cluetrain.com) quickly sparked a lively Internet conversation about the current nature of business. The idea came from a former veteran executive from a now-defunct Fortune 500 firm when he was describing his firm's plummet: "The clue train stopped here four times a day for ten years, and they never took delivery." Authors Levine (Sun Guide to Web Style), Doc Searls (president, The Searls Group), et al., present their view of how the Internet is changing the very way people discuss their business challenges and how it's making markets smarter and faster. As the authors say, business-as-usual is gone forever, and this new "clue train" acts as a wake-up call, offering answers that are often couched in anecdotes and war stories. The narrative rides the razor's edge between glib hype and substance, and though readers may find that it occasionally dips deep into the New Age genre, this is for the most part a weighty work that gets at the heart of the matter: the powerful impact the Internet has had and will continue to have on our fundamental concept of organizational structure, management style, and market success. Highly recommended for all academic and larger public libraries.
-Dale F. Farris, Groves, TX
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Internet is loosening the corset strings of businesspretty much sloughing off the whole cruel garmentsuggest computer-folk Levine, Locke, Searls, and Weinberger; and businesses that don't get natural soon won't have any customers. At once atavistic and nimble, Levine, Locke, Searls, and Weinberger ring the changes brought by the Internet, which for them have one particular, radiant elementthe humanity of it all: human language, the human love of fabulous stories, the human joy in mingling aesthetics with all aspects of life. The Internet and intranet workstations encourage open, unaffected, uncontrived talk, giving back to business the banter of the bazaar, where laughter and personality were the spices and a person's word the lubrication. The book pokes its finger, repeatedly and deeply, in the eye of corporate business practice, sweeping before it such self-destructive constructs as management pyramids, corporate firewalls, the culture of secrecy and hierarchy, flacks and hucksters, and advertising's jargon and eye candy. Although the Internet may not make people ``smarter,'' it certainly exposes them to more informationif they can wade through all the material and winnow the good from the badand allows in many cases unfettered access to the makers of the goods, which is why it is the godsend for the artisan and a boon for the buyer who still likes the maker's mark upon the product. There are no wall-to-wall answers here, so cherished by quick-fix business books, for all producers must express themselves individually. That unpredictability is also one of the charms of Levine and Co. Playful and leveling in their anti-bureaucratic and non-hierarchical tone, they love plain talk about substance and values. Their manifesto is as demanding as a Bill of Rights, yet so broadly applicable it rubs shoulders with Brownian motion. A different brand of business book, thank goodness: saucy, heartfelt, and warmly appealing in its faith in the commonwealth. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"...Cluetrain's authors are right in what they say. Networks-the Internet, intranets, and extranets-are changing everything, and corporations must adapt or become roadkill...an insightful book..." -- Business 2.0

"...Locke & Co. produced The Cluetrain Manifesto, a screed urging businesses to make their corporate communication more honest, open, and engaging...

The document created a buzz in marketing circles and sparked a nascent Cluetrain movement...Now, in the just released The Cluetrain Manifesto, [they]...expand on their Net-savvy marketing primer." -- Wired

"A dose of The Cluetrain Manifesto could go a long way toward showing the willing-but-ignorant that for a healthy company, enabling conversations is a business opportunity-not a risk...One of the most refreshing business books ever." -- Sm@rt Reseller

"For every retail or consumer-products company wondering why its Internet marketing doesn't seem to be working, The Cluetrain Manifesto...offers fresh and sound advice, expressed in entertaining prose. Its oft-repeated premise--that markets are conversations--should be pounded into the collective brain of corporate executives." -- Business Week

"If you are a raving radical about the Internet, you'll find the authors to be kindred spirits. Even if you're not, the book provokes new ways of thinking about business. It may even turn you into one of those radicals." -- Eric Nee, Context

"Locke's cooked up a crazy and brilliant and rather hotheaded business book/philosophy called The Cluetrain Manifesto, and with a few e-mail buddies managed to sneak this madness past a lot of corporate entities who ought to have been very, very afraid of publishing something so smart and obnoxious and true. The Cluetrain Manifesto is a highly effective device for kicking out the jams on what you thought you knew about being a consumer and citizen in the year 2000. -- Seattle Weekly

"Provocative." -- The Book Page

"Read it...these guys are on to something...The Cluetrain Manifesto offers a simple message...and it's turning business right-side up." -- Knowledge Management

"You might not agree with everything these web provocateurs say, you might not like their tone, but you will ignore their ideas at your peril." -- Fast Company

"[The Cluetrain Manifesto is] the most important business book since In Search of Excellence...Get a clue. Read the book." -- Jeff Angus, Information Week

Written by four of the liveliest voices on the Web, this book takes you deeper into the new order of business than any this decade. The Cluetrain Manifesto presents a stunning tapestry of anecdotes, object lessons, parodies, war stories, and suggestions, all aimed at illustrating what it will take to survive and prosper in the fast-forward world on the wire.

The Cluetrain Manifesto burst onto the scene in March 1999, with ninety-five theses nailed up on the Web. Within days, the website 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.

Christopher Locke clocke@panix.com
Unlike any other business book you've ever read.
Does the cluetrain manifesto tell business where to get off -- or how to get on? A bit of both, actually. The book unpacks the ideas telegraphically presented in our "95 Theses" that appeared on the web in the Spring of 1999. A mere 17 days after the site went live, cluetrain was the focus of an above-the-fold story on the front page of The Wall Street Journal's Marketplace section. Tom Petzinger wrote there: "The Manifesto is the pretentious, strident and absolutely brilliant creation of four marketing gurus who have renounced marketing-as-usual."

We don't think of ourselves as gurus, just as four guys who've thought a whole lot about business and the Internet. By the way, the pretentiousness was my contribution. Much of the brilliance came from my co-conspirators (and co-authors): David Weinberger, Rick Levine and Doc Searls.

The premise of the book is that markets are conversations. However, the industrial revolution, and everything that followed in its wake right up until today, has represented a 200-year-long interruption of this dialogue. We explain how the Internet brings it back -- with a vengeance -- both in the online marketplace and inside wired corporations.

The book as a whole is subtitled: "the end of business as usual." Is it? Read the book to find out. And please: don't reveal the exciting conclusion!

We had a lot of fun writing this. We hope you'll have fun reading it. If you gain penetrating new insights into the dynamics of e-commerce, we'll be very pleased. If it makes you blow coffee out your nose, even better!

Rick Levine is web architect for Sun Microsystems' Java Software group. He is responsible for the creation of much of the public web interface for java.sun.com and the Java Developer Connection. He is also the creator of hatfactory.com and author of the Sun Guide to Web Style.

Christopher Locke publishes Entropy Gradient Reversals from Boulder, Colorado. He has worked for Fujitsu, Carnegie Mellon University, Mecklermedia, MCI, and IBM, and has written extensively for publications such as Forbes, Byte, Internet World, and Information Week.

Doc Searls is the senior editor for Linux Journal, the first and only magazine for the Linux space. He is also president of The Searls Group, the Silicon Valley marketing consultancy. He has written on technology and business for OMNI, PC Magazine, and Upside. His own Web 'zine is Reality 2.0.

David Weinberger is the publisher of JOHO (Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization). He is a regular commentator on National Public Radio and a columnist for KMWorld and Intranet Design Magazine. He has written for Wired, The New York Times, and Smithsonian.

The authors' manifesto is a Web-based reaction to the constraints of brick and mortar corporations, and they use it to cajole and provoke organizational types everywhere to get onboard or be left in the dust of the Internet Age. At its base, this is a rethinking of management and a rabble-rousing invitation to move way outside the box. Though the points made are valid, if not terribly original (remember the 1960s?), the authors' adolescent language detracts from their mission, which seems to be to build organizations modeled on a chat room template. However, the postadolescent rant about organizational life in the Internet Age detracts from the more profound aspectsof the authors' vision. T.W. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.