The Cluetrain Manifesto : The End Of Business As Usual

Rating:
Summary: One Great Thought Beat to Death 190 Times
Review:

There is one great thought in this book, i.e. that the Web makes it possible for everyone to participate in the "great conversation", and that it is the summing and slicing of these conversations that will drive business in the 21st Century.

The authors are quite correct, and helpful, when they point out that in the aggregate, the combined preferences, insights, and purchasing power of all Web denizens is vastly more valuable and relevant to business decisions about production, quality, and services than any "push" marketing hype or engineering presumptions about what people might need.

Sadly, the authors' neither provide an integrated understanding of the true terrain over which the great conversation takes place, nor do they provide any substantive suggestions for how web content managers might improve our access to the knowledge and desires that are now buried within the web of babel. Their cute "tell a story" and equally cute advice to have big boxes for customer stories in the forms provided for input, simply do not cut it with me.

This book is a 5 for the one great idea, a 2 for beating the idea to death, a 3 for presentation, and a 4 overall because it was just good enough to keep me reading to the last page.

Rating:
Summary: Multiple Viewpoints, Same Story- Conversations!
Review: Aimed at anyone with an interest in contemporary and future wired business, 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' focuses on re-engaging people in conversational interactions with business (rather than being segmented 'over-the-wall' after approval by teams of lawyers!).

The excessively repetitive, rambling, example-light chapters span: the manifesto itself of 95 theses; Internet Apocalypso (some history- errors about AI (60s not 80s); Taylorism mentioned but not balancing human-centric ergonomic approaches (mostly 60s onwards); and us vs them factory distrust not just 1920s Ford, but 1800s UK factories acts (& before with Luddites/ Mills etc..) ); The Longing; Talk is Cheap (newsgroups); Markets Are Conversations (great quotes "consumer... a gullet.. gulps products and craps cash"; and meaningless technolatin veterinarian describing dog as "a platform for sniffing, ... an open environment for fleas, and .. supports barking" ); the hyperlinked organization (mismatch company to staff through: communications, org chart, work management, career path, information, goal-oriented, deadlines, customers, office building and professional status); EZ Answers (list for e-success: relax, have sense of humor, find your voice and use it, tell the truth, don't panic, enjoy yourself, be brave, be curious, play more, ream always, listen up, and rap on); and Post Apocalypso.

Strengths include: the enthusiasm of tone, and extremely timely human-centric anti-impersonal business practices message- it's all about unscripted market and human conversations.

Weaknesses include: the extreme repetition; errors in contemporary & historical technologies/business anecdotes; conflicts between contributions (Web is all about sales in one part, not at all elsewhere); and a lack of side-bar success stories & detailed evidence. It would have been interesting (to this reviewer) for a formal "debate" framing of the message with contributions from process-oriented major consulting firms, and community interjections & involvement.

Overall, 'Cluetrain' is a worthy but lightweight book. Similar books include: Siegels' glossy e-brainstorm "Futurize Your Enterprize" (ISBN 0471357634); Jensen's human-centric 'Simplicity' (ISBN 073820210X); and Bloor's transaction-focused generalist 'electronic B@zaar' (ISBN 185788258X).

Rating:
Summary: The end of business as usual
Review: Hard to recommend such a small publication when the entire thing is now available for download at the website.
Markets are conversations. This is good.
Mass marketing is not a conversation. That is bad.
The authors leave themselves open to some fair criticism - their ideas aren't fully developed nor are their any clear suggestions as to implementation. It reads more as a protestation against existing norms than a viable alternative.
Find a second-hand copy. It's worth a read but not quite worth the price.

Rating:
Summary: Catchy and interesting although repetitious
Review: I enjoyed reading this book...the authors had a lot of very enlightening points and they presented their material in a much more "down to earth", magazine style way than the average business book. Also, I felt that they spoke for the lower echelon of workers as much or more than they spoke for very tip of upper management. Their description of worker motivations and customer reactions was quite accurate.

They captured the idea of the Internet being a tidal force in the marketplace very well...

HOWEVER - they authors beat the dead horse WAY too much after the first 75 pages or so. I feel that the book could have been made much stronger by heavier editing - truly 20% of it could have been completely axed and we'd have all been better off for it...

Overall, though, I highly recommend reading this book for its unique perspective on the Internet and how it may change business from both the customers' and employess' vantage points. When you feel that you might have read something before, you probably have...

Rating:
Summary: the meaning of an epoch
Review: It's quite important that this book sells more than any otherbusiness book since Amazon started keeping records Only if this book gets the kind of epoch-changing reception that eg In search of Excellence did in its time, will companies start to make real use of the internet as the 21st C medium defining business models, society and improvement of the human lot. Learn as you engage with the train's fury why the internet works as an entirely different media from the television spot. With huge opportunities and risks for those companies who get the message. I was a contributing author to the 1984 book the 2024 report mainly written by Norman Macrae. The main future scenario we developed was the way an internetworked world would change everything (for the human good). So far the world's just on the schedule we envisioned, but we are incredibly disappointed by how many commercial web sites have been developed as if they were still using a one way communications medium. And it is now clear that most of the biggest companies in the world still have business cases that are the opposite of best net practice. It really is time that every CEO got Cluetrained. Otherwise a lot of sincere employees are going to pay the cost in companies whose CEOs missed the train......Chris Macrae, [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Five Stars. What more could I say in a title?
Review: Many people happen to think this is a great book and I think it's definitely something that many business majors could benefit from. I'd advise people who don't find this book to be of any use or to be "nothing more than the ramblings of a number of self-appointed dot-com smart guys who have little or no experience in the real world of profit and loss" to stick to lower level reading and I think I'm not alone here judging by the other reviewers. "How-to's" are probably what you should be grazing on, spiteful remarks notwithstanding. As all successful businessmen know, and there are still many on the Web, it takes creative thinking to implement vision in real-world manifestations and this book is a great starting place for spurring that kind of thinking -- the now-cliched "Thinking out of the box." Anybody would rather devote several years of their lives to a project that's original enough to succeed and taking the thoughts in this book to heart is a great way to help assure that.

Rating:
Summary: Love it or hate it but don't ignore it
Review: This is one of those books that people either love or hate. My guess is that its the delivery people don't like, not the message. Personally, I tend to think its just plain common sense but I won't pretend I had a clue before reading. After reading, its painfully obvious.

There are several extremely valuable realizations about how the internet changes business (and much more) which you likely ought to consider as you think about your business.

If you want better insight into what is so exciting and empowering about the internet for customers this is worth the read. Some of you can probably get enough by just reading the manifesto. Status quo corporations, you need to be on your guard (chances are you're not reading this anyway).

I would have preferred a little less 60's "revolution is in the air" hype. If you're looking for a revolution, take another hit of acid and wait. This book simply describes what inevitably happens when better communication and information is available in a free market economy.

I also think the book could have been written in about 30 pages but those 30 pages were powerful enough to deserve 4 stars.