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Buy at Amazon.co.uk
amazon.co.uk
The Cluetrain Manifesto: the end of business as usual
by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger
Paperback 188 pages
Copyright FT.com 2000
Buy at Amazon.com
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Bon Journal

Cluetrain manifesto, the end of business as usual

In early 2000, while browsing at a book stall in an exhibition --- probably Internet World 2000 or something similar, I enquired about interesting books to review. I was preparing a new course "Psychology of Multimedia" and desperately needed books about the Internet or related subjects. The stall owner took down my name. Before long, "The Cluetrain Manifesto" arrived in the post.

It's June 2004. I am ashamed to say that it's taken me four years to find the time, interest, and motivation to read this paperback. From the outset, it looked interesting, and I mentally registered to read it. Too many other things got in the way, however.

Had I read it earlier, I probably wouldn't have been able to digest it as well as I could today. Why?

In the last four years, I experienced and experimented with the Internet. And I can see why the first of 95 theses in "The Cluetrain Manifesto" states that "markets are conversations."

It's all about conversation. This journal is not a conversation. I write. You read. It only becomes a conversation if you give me feedback (via the form on the bottom left), and I acknowledge and respond to it.

Then we're on to something.

A conversation is a dialogue. I cannot generate a market if I simply post my thoughts on this billboard. I don't know what you're thinking.

Having left the salaried world for nearly two years now, I wonder if that world has changed. If it has in the way the book predicts, then I am tempted to return to it. The hyperlinked organisation, not the top-down, command-control, and bureaucratic memo-driven organisation that defined large companies ---- that's the kind of entity that I would go for.

14 June 2004 Monday
Related entries & links:
analyticalQ book reviews
Web advice
The intimacy of cyberspace encounters
Cluetrain Manifesto - official site
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Anne Ku at Ilp in May 2001
Anne Ku
writes about her travels, conversations, thoughts, events, music, and anything else that is interesting enough to fill a web page.
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