Hop on the Cluetrain

The recently published book "The Cluetrain Manifesto" occasionally derails. The insight and wit of Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger seem diminished by their translation to print. The narrative and e-clips that work well on the Web lose edge when stretched to 190 pages. Essays are often redundant. Some of the jokes are pretty lame.

Read it anyway; these guys are on to something.

Looking at the Web's impact on the lost act of communication, "The Cluetrain Manifesto" offers a simple message: After years of disuse, the sound of natural human interaction, heard for generations in the market square, is rising again in cyberspace. And it's turning business right-side up.

E-mail, chat forums and instant access to information and each other are returning something most never knew they'd lost--their voice. The Manifesto suggests that people are again discovering how to talk like people, rather than corporate zombies or cops on the witness stand.

In the newsgroups and chat sessions where the four authors dwell, authentic, candid and, most of all, human voices can again be heard. And they like the sound of it.

The power of those connected masses who now talk (like humans) about their Saturn car, their United flight or their boss' breath--is defeating the evils of corporate greed, corporatespeak and (worst of all) corporate public relations. After a 100-year corruption in which "market" became a verb, the natural order of free exchange is returning. Commerce and communication are no longer one-way streets.

The Manifesto makes it clear that those that recognize and accept that return of "voice" will prosper, and those who deny it will perish. Businesses may as well tell the truth to themselves, their employees and their customers--because they're gonna to hear it anyway.

While I cheer for the rebellion of those voices, the one in my head tells me the battle may not be won. The Manifesto underestimates the insidious nature of commercialization. If success in the Internet age is dictated by chat sessions, testimonials and a digital buzz among strangers, how long before the very organizations being admonished in the book because they don't get "it," do get it, but on their level? The Manifestites are optimists on that point:"Marketing has been training its practitioners for decades in the art of impersonating sincerity and warmth. But marketing can no longer keep up appearances. People talk. They get on the Web, and they let the world know that the happy site with the smiling puppy masks a company with coins where its heart is supposed to be. The market will find out who and what you are. Count on it," the authors write.

I'd like to, really I would. But I've heard N Sync and they're not that good. The success of those teen idols is the result of carefully crafted marketing-- including well timed endorsements posted to appropriate chat sessions. That manipulation is nothing new to stock promoters; and they're amateurs when compared to the likes of Disney or Time Warner. Alas, the merger with AOL hadn't taken place before the Manifesto went to print.

"The Cluetrain Manifesto" may not get it exactly right, but the train is on the right track. Available from Perseus Books.