The document discusses how the internet has given rise to more open communication and connection between people. It argues that markets today are essentially conversations, where companies can only innovate and understand customer needs by actively engaging with customers. For companies to succeed, they need to stop focusing so much on advertising and packaging themselves, and instead put themselves out there genuinely by sharing their true passions and engaging in open conversations with markets.

1. Cluetrain Ch. 1

2. Introduction Fascination with telling tales The net has given free rein to play Hypertext is nonhierarchical Intellectual bravery; more comfortable with risk than regulation; vastly enhanced ability to learn things; pace of learning is accelerating

3. Intro The web reinforces freedom Convergence of the market conversation and the conversation of the corporate workforce results in commerce becoming far more naturally integrated into the life of individuals and communities

4. Ch. 1 We long for more connection… Why do we come online? For each other Nothing online accepted at face value or taken for granted = values

5. yahoo Despite its hacker roots = “global media company” - what happened? What continues to happen?

6. voice Conversations Values Audience is connected to itself. Where do we see this today?

7. seditious The web as an acquiescent mass-consumer market is a figment The Internet is inherently seditious

8. Why do companies care? Without the conversation, companies can’t innovate, build consensus, determine what works and what doesn’t,

9. Markets are conversations Trade routes pave the storylines. Across the millennia in between, the human voice is the music we have always listened for, and still best understand.

10. commerce Commerce is a natural part of human life, but it has become increasingly unnatural over the intervening centuries, incrementally divorcing itself from the people on whom it most depends The result is a vast chasm between buyers and sellers Commerce has come to ignore the natural conversation that defines communities as human

11. Drive out fear Central tenet of Deming’s TQM Conversations among all parts of the supply chain deemed essential Now, it’s a step further: drive out fear and talk to your customers and listen to your customers.

12. Knowledge worth having Comes from turned on volitional attention, not from slavishly following someone else’s orders Innovation based on such knowledge is exciting, inflammatory, even dangerous, because itt tends to challenge fixed procedures and inflexible policies

13. Businesses that have a future… Are about subtle differences, not wholesale conformity; diversity, not homogeneity; breaking rules, not enforcing them; pushing the envelope, not punching the clock; invitation, not protection; doing it first, not doing it “right;” making it better, not perfect; telling the truth, not spinning lies; turning people on, not “packaging” them, about building convivial communities and knowledge ecologies, not leveraging demographic sectors

14. building convivial communities and knowledge ecologies, not leveraging demographic sectors

15. The Internet invites participation

16. The internet greatly facilitates the sharing of relevant knowledge within a community joined by like interests

17. Companies that are actually communicating with online markets have flung doors wide open

18. The question is whether, as a company, you can afford to have more than an advertising jingle persona

19. Can you put yourself out there: say what you think in your own voice, present who you really are, show what you really care about?

20. Do you have any genuine passion to share?

21. Humans are great at this; companies suck at it.

22. Markets don’t want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the firewall.

23. PR doesn’t work. Markets are conversations.

24. How do conversations get started? How do people with common interests find each other? Ans: word gets around, and on the net, word gets around fast (uh…FB, etc.)