This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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First published in 2000, The Cluetrain Manifesto proclaimed "the end of business as usual." I remember reading it a few years back and feeling a bit disconnected from the ideas. Perhaps I wasn’t ready for it at the time or The Cluetrain was just too far ahead of its time.
Whatever the case, I picked it up again today. In reading the preface, this quote from co-author David Weinberger jumped off the page:
"We’re not on the web primarily to shop, to be marketed to, to receive business’s messages,’ or to download missives from the HR Department. We’re there to invent a new world. Business is welcome to play. But first it’s got to figure out – if it can – how to talk, how to make mistakes in public, how to express its passion for its products, how to deal with masses of people each of who is unrelentingly individual, how to love."
Think I’ll take another ride on the Cluetrain.