The Cluetrain Manifesto's Doc Searls On the Web 2.0 Economy and Cluetrain 10 Years Later

Doc shows examples how how Google sees Web 2.0 as advertising, how tools like Facebook create huge streams of content from people in your face - and that still push advertising into your face. Zillions of consumers are being accessed by marketers in this environment in still pretty much the same way as the old dot-com days. Searls underscores that money is made when things are useful. Points to the endless score of open source code and blogs that help people to make money even if they don't make money themselves. Blog search engines enable blog content to have visibility almost immediately, so we can get our personal needs broadcast to the world almost immediately. We should be able to broadcast  to the marketplace that we need a rental car in Denver, that I need a stroller for twins somewhere on the next 300 miles of Interstate highway. We should be able to manage our own healthcare informaiton, negotiate contracts with mobile phone providers that aren't draconian terms. [Opens the floor to questions].

Question: Where is the place for marketers in this environment?

Searls:  Cluetrain ranted against CRM, oftentimes marketing is really sales.

Q: Does sales become more powerful in this equation?

Searls: Probably. Look at public radio, many people don't pay for it but would pay for it if it were free. Public radio perfected the fund-raising marathons, using CRM systems. Funds should be able to come in from anywhere where you're experiencing the content, iPods, etc.

Q: Place of the semantic web?

Searls: Will see where this goes, hope that I will have more control over that stuff, would rather my default for browsing would be anonymous, ways that we interact in the real world are not well represented on the Web, Friendster, Orkut online systems have limits. Prompt "You are my friend, yes or no?" Or "I saw you on LinkedIn and thought that I'd write." Well, help me here. My wife talks about being  in retail, when looking at a credit card from a customer you're really looking at many other factors to determine what the person is about. We did business in ways that were not as well understood today.

Q: If we want anonymity, we're cutting ourself from a lot of the world, when I am exposed I can find levels of intentionality of different entities, such as a bookstore. I want randomness, want to run into things that change my life. Entranced by the idea of having new ideas thrown at me. Privacy and anonymity is "coin," CRM has to be worked from the inside.ff that

Searle: Well, we do need CRM, we need the knowing but not-too-knowing of sharing of useful information. We have low, middle and high hanging fruit. Ideal, would like to build it out. I'm an old radio guy, listen a lot,

Q: Would like to give to Bill Moyers, to other specific entitites, but as well to the entities between so that I don't get blocked. 

Q: Utopian model of power shifting to people being marketed to, need the majority of people being comfortable with the technology, will we really reach that  point?

Searls: The Web itself is Utopian, people didn't think that the Web would overtake Compuserve. If the system were closed it won't work, may take many years. Major orgs say these changes for fields like healthcare will take forever, yet there are places in the wild where it's happening already. Instant messaging in Gmail done by a kid in the Midwest, OpenID, LiveJournal from a small town guy. 

Q: NPR is good, but also a selfish consumer, will listen for free until I die. Is there an inherent selfishness, where people will take people for free? Where's the balance between these options?

Searls:  Web site called "Bradsucks.net," makes a good living off of it. Produced 1 CD, the rest is stuff that he's done. If you're in a position to pay you might.

Q: Twitter?

Searls: A thousand followers on Twitter, prototypes all kinds of things, very much the live Web, useful for saying that I am going to be in New York, could have pulled together people quickly. Handy for following fires in San Diego, people would Twit items, really an experimental system, even RSS is obscure for most people. Don't think that we're built very well, the 'Net is a giant zero, in the long run it isn't expensive to run it, telcos complain about the cost of bringing in fiber, but people will pay $2,000 for a sidewalk or a TV.  

Q:  Have discussed going back to face to face transactions, we can talk about the code, but part of the driver is our own ways that we value, get some pleasure out of using it. Giving money to people to play music at a wedding -there are transactions that work.

Q: Proved your point with radio, in that case convenience rules, more convenient not to give than to give.

QUICK TAKE: The kids get it already, they expose themselves, they sell on eBay - much has happened that proves Cluetrain out.