Smarter people, smarter markets, and the importance for businesses to speak in a human voice

Back in the early days of the Internet, when the dotcoms were booming, a book called the Cluetrain Manifesto was published. With people connecting on the Internet around the world, employees of companies were gaining a voice, sometimes more prominent and influential than the companies they worked for. Also people that shared common interests, often referred to as markets in the business world, were linking together and the markets were becoming smarter than the businesses that hoped to sell to them. In the Cluetrain Manifesto authors Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine revealed some amazing revelations about how businesses were currently run and how they needed to adjust to keep up with our changing society as affected by the Internet.

One of the most important points, which can be found on their website http://www.cluetrain.com/, is that most corporations “only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal.” This can become insulting to the people of the new linked-together market groups because they are now smarter than that. “To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman” the Cluetrain states. It is necessary for corporations to speak in a human voice and sound “real.” The book goes on to explain this phenomenon in depth.

The Cluetrain website lists their 95 Thesis which alone - without reading the book – are very insightful. It also contains a link to read the complete manuscript online.

One of the more laughable insights from this website is that it’s a terrible example of a website and people wouldn’t stand for this format today. You have to read a good portion of the website just to figure out what it’s about. In this day and age most people wouldn’t take the time to do that when they first come to a new site.

The Cluetrain website isn’t really trying to sell the book though (which is still offered for sale, but is also offered free). This website is the original that came out ten years ago and at the time it probably was not their intention to create an atrocious site. Left the way it was when it originally came out, the site is proof of some of the points they are trying to make; today people have become smarter and would not stand for this disorganized and disorderly format in a website.