The Cluetrain Manifesto (10th Anniversary Edition)

Your tired notions of “the market” make our eyes glaze over. We don’t recognize ourselves in your projections—perhaps because we know we’re already elsewhere. 72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.

While many such people already work for companies today, most companies ignore their ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happytalk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it.

Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.

When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.

Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.

Hyperlinks are the connections made by real individuals based on what they care about and what they know, the paths that emerge because that’s where the feet are walking, as opposed to the highways bulldozed into existence according to a centralized plan.

They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.