Two Theses, Closely Related

According to the Cluetrain Manifesto:

26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, you genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.


Consumers aren't stupid. They'll find a way to counteract corporate bullshit.

First of all, what kind of phrase is "chock-a-block?"

Second, I'm sure we're all aware here that corporate sites make it damn near impossible to find out the information you really need- that is, customer service contact information. One would think that since the advent of corporate sites about a million years ago, corporations would catch on that the single most searched-for item on a site is human contact information. They have not.

In 2001, a New York Times article identified the lack of public relations contact information. How exactly is the public to get information on a company or product when they can't contact the representative?

A similar trend was identified in a correlated industry standard- the automated operator system (and, coincidentally, the topic of my 505 Writing Diagnostic, deemed a "very nice paper"- thanks, Professor Garcia). Tired of run-around bullshit when checking account balances or trying to tell Comcast the internet is out but being put on hold for about 45 minutes, someone painstakingly compiled a list of shortcuts to human beings when calling ridiculous customer service "your call is important to us" robot lines.

The point here is that as we become more connected we become less connected. The point my class is forcing me to make is that these people that wrote my least favorite book I've read this semester were right. Corporations make useful information hard to find because they're afraid of consumers.

"Bringing Down Business as Usual"

“Real authority is based on respect for knowledge.”
Go tell that to my high-school history professor from Texas. Named Kirby. Who hated Californians.




Written as a dialogue between web advocates and oblivious corporations, the cluetrain manfesto (no capitalization necessary) posits that the marketplace is a series of conversations, turning the notion of technological determinism on its head. With tired, redundant analogies, the manifesto lent itself to the view that people just want to talk to each other, and through these interactions can shake up the order of businesses or fix a software glitch or point a loyal Saturn customer to a cheaper oil change. Corporations that can utilize web conversation skills are much more likely to succeed in the new (technological) conversation market.

The internet is awe-inspiring. The web is us, but even we don’t know exactly what it is or what it’s for. We just know it’s cool. And we know it’s highly insubordinate.

It can’t be controlled by businesses, and it cannot become a mass market. “Because the Net connects people to each other, and impassions and empowers through those connections, the media dream of the Web as another acquiescent mass-consumer market is a figment and a fantasy…The Internet is inherently seditious.”

The internet subverts the hierarchy of corporations as it advances. The “panopticon” view of the internet is reversed, where many can see in but no one is in the center, in control.

If marketing is a one-way conversation, the internet changes the nature of marketing. Scratch that, it destroys marketing and paves the way for new advertisement: the corporation cares. And the corporation can show it cares through customer interaction.

Metcalfe’s Law, an overused but nonetheless vital axiom of CCT studies, states that “the value of a network increases as the square of the number of users connected to it—connections multiply value exponentially.” It paves the way for mass market’s revenge: as more users become connected and start talking (and further, start thinking), they realize that the internet has the power to turn corporations into “replaceable merchants” after being “replaceable consumers” or “replaceable workers” for so long.

Here’s where I have a problem with the manifesto. Though I know manifestos are not, by definition, supposed to be rational or coherent in any way, cluetrain begins to contradict itself and widely known facts.

The authors claim that as markets become larger (markets of scale), choice increases. Well, not in this corporate climate. What about telecommunications companies increasingly monopolizing? What about Microsoft?

The authors also claim businesses are based on individuals, after spending pages upon pages trying to convince us otherwise. If that were the case, then why do companies need to humanize and talk to people in order to succeed? Wouldn’t they already be doing that?

The authors assume we talk to each other. If we’re headed to an “economy of voice,” then why do we feel even less connected to the people at the top or the people sitting next to us on the bus?

I suppose this is what you get when multiple people compose a “revolutionary” book.