The Cluetrain Manifesto

I can say without hesitation that the Internet has the capacity to change its user’s lives. As a digital native the internet touched my life at a very young age, and I have witnessed firsthand its evolution to a more user friendly web 2.0. Not many people  expect me to have seen and experienced this phenomenon seeing as I am an athlete and have easily been able to duck and dodge the “geek” label. What they do not realize is that my athletic involvement has not prevented me from being informed and in touch with new technology. For example, various aspects of the Internet, mainly Twitter,  helped me register for this course, upon several tweets and an email to my professor. Ironically, this ties into Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and David Weinburger’s book The Cluetrain Manifesto. I took advantage of several direct connections who assisted me in joining this journalism class.
The Cluetrain begins with a list of 95 theses. Its most important was first, “Markets are conversation.” Having taken a media and society class last semester this idea jumped off the page at me because I was already aware of the fact that a discussion or conversation could not exist without an open forum for free robust conversation, and the Internet is the perfect place for this conversation to take place.
“The Internet became a place where people could talk to other people without constraint. Without filters or censorship or official sanction — and perhaps most significantly, without advertising”(Chapter 1, Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger). The Internet has forced people to clearly explain their stances on their respective issues and with their respective opinions because there is so much room for free interpretation of words. Originally the Forum for this literally required face to face communication between many people, but now the forum has been transported into large industrial buildings that house the various hard drives and servers that run many networks.  The Cluetrain had a problem with this because prior to web 2.0  caused the slight problem of depersonalization within the industries producing online products.

“Its increasing divorce from the day-to-day concerns of real people, commerce has come to ignore the natural conversation that defines communities as human” (Chapter 1).
 This excerpt shows that consumers could not really interact and get the proper feed back they required.  This means, for example, that the young parent who recently purchased his child a video game system, could not call the company for help with the device because of the existence of automated answering systems that provide needy customers with only a set amount of responses to their problems.
Steps to change this came when private companies started to deprogram their production lines and supply chain styles to encourage workers to start exchanging their ideas and opinions over the Intranet. Ideas began to flourish and things would never be the same simply because people were given the forum for genuine conversation occurs.
Now the customer service aspect of companies is incredibly efficient and effective. A good example of this is SouthWest Airlines. They have a Twitter site that often tweets about various promotions.  Customers can also mention complaints or issues with the company. The first major issue they encountered they handled very well. Actor Kevin Smith who is known best for his roles in “Clerks” and “MallRats” was thrown off of a flight because of his size. He instantly went to the Twitter world and began bashing @Southwestair. The Southwest customer service Twitter team instantly sprang into action and quickly and efficiently resolved the problem.
  The Internet is now evolving to be an extension of television as a result of the advertising, marketing a demographic issues that are being researched by various companies. Unlike television, the Internet does not shove information down its viewers throats. Internet users have the ability to interact with each other based on what they are watching. It has the capability to bring individual people together, those who were previously viewing certain shows by themselves and talking to themselves now have the ability to hop online and go on a website such as Twitter or Facebook and put their opinions out there for the world to see and discuss. The web really allows traditional media to stretch further and causes more discussion then what was originally intended. I found myself doing this as I was watching MSNBC’s “To Catch a Predator” and G4’s “Cheaters.” Ironically, “To Catch a Predator” is a series hosted by Chris Hansen where Internet predators that prey on unsuspecting minors are caught in an online sting operation. The investigation employs decoys who use various online chat services to get adult men to agree to come to the home of an innocent minor in the search for sexual pleasure.  This is an example of one of the downsides of chatrooms on the Internet. Chats have the ability to turn the world into one large community due to the rate at which information is being exchanged.

Ultimately, the Cluetrain really stresses the benefits of the Internet and its practical applications throughout the business world and regular day to day human interaction. It reitterates the fact that we as people desperately need a new world to speak in, and the Internet provides us with that realm. Social media is our outlet, and it is not regulated like all other forms of media, so there is so much room for total freedom of expression. Twitter pages and Facebook statuses draw attention from us because as humans we’re programmed to respond to a personal voice, and we see that voice within these posts.  Business markets used to exist purely because of face to face communication, but this is no longer the case. Now we can almost instantly communicate with each other over vast distances and at any point in time.