Odd to me that I should discover the ClueTrain Manifesto (I prefer to think of myself as fashionably late to the party) in the same week that the latest of Wired magazine finally makes it to the top of the oughtta read pile with it’s articles about on-line openness. Including Clive Thompson’s The See-Through CEO with it’s painfully timely concluding paragraph. (I won’t spoil it for you.)
I’ve been cruising the blogging-to-promote-your-business books for the last month or so. (short review/compro of a couple in the pipe line — promise.) And of course getting hit with the buzzy marketing technique jive of the moment (reputation management). All of which I now realize are two or three step removed derivatives of the manifesto.
And I’m beginning to notice something that I think is inevitable in the life of an idea. The derivatives drop some especially challenging part of the original. And in doing so lose a significant part of the power of the original.
The social web (for want of a better short hand) is not a marketing tool or a medium. It is a place. With lots of doors and windows and an extensive sewer system that the rats know with an intimacy that the marketing mouseketeers will never (want to) achieve.
The time has come to revisit the source text.
