I used to love the Cluetrain Manifesto.
What was not to love? I was young and rather clueless, and with a rebellious streak. Here come The Beatles, and they tell you that the ways of the world are wrong, which was true, and that everything will change. Which was false.
Quite naturally, I hopped on the Cluetrain. It served me well for some time, so no hard feelings. And yet, it’s incredible how different things turned out to be!
We went from…
#62 Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.
(which was spot-on!)
to…
Companies doing that exactly, outsourcing their ‘conversations’ to PR agencies, flacks and hucksters and people in charge of ‘delivering’ the ‘right’ message.
And from…
#2 Markets consist of human beings…
#3 Conversations among human beings sound human…
#10 As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized…
#17 Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves…
#89 We have real power and we know it…
#94 To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are…
to…
Brands using AI-generated influencers to promote products on social media [link].
(As if ‘real’ influencers were not bad enough)


