10 years Cluetrain manifesto

Its 10 years ago that the Cluetrain Manifesto (the end of business as usual) is written. In a set of 95 theses Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger . It is a set of 95 theses which put forward a call to action. Internet will restore the old marketplace on the town square (markets are conversations) and this new open marketplace will remodel the whole society.

“People of earth…..
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies. a power global conversation.”


I overheard an interview with Doc Sears on what actually did change over the last 10 years & what didn’t. Doc, currently working at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, at Harvard University, adding his contribution to VRM. He started to answer the last question: “what didn’t change”. He replied that in fact everything changed, “the frog was boiled, the future is here but its unevenly distributed, but no way turn around. There is an dependency on internet and the power to contribute widely to society is given back to the individual”.

On the first question time was on the side of Doc. We all have witnessed what changed over the last 10 years. Markets are becoming conversations again, instead of demographics, mass markets are done and we are get to deal on a human level again. All niches together will create the mass. The symmetry (producers produce & consumers consume) is gone because now consumers produce as well.


The interview ended why Apple was still so successful despite they doing the opposite as described in Cluetrain. Doc explained that Apple contributed a lot to the start-up of the internet but that now Apple is Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs as an artist & you don’t tell Picasso how to paint.


So unless you think that you are Picasso (re)read Cluetrain again and see how you can contribute to the conversation; because markets are ……… conversations.