Weekly Blog Post #1 - Cluetrain Manifesto

The most interesting concept I came across from the list of 95 theses was number 91. The concept reads “our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world, also have no future.” I can see how the people who wrote “The Cluetrain Manifesto” 10 years ago think that companies are disconnected from their consumers’ inner personal circle. Today companies are all about reaching out and getting connected with their consumers. Ever since the explosion of user-generated content by means of MySpace or YouTube, companies have caught on. Companies now put out viral ad videos on YouTube or make a company MySpace page.

The concept that applies to my media field would be number 34. The concept reads “to speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.” In the past few years, video game publishing and development companies have now reached out to the consumers that buy their games through the internet. It is practically the standard now for development companies to have forums for potential consumers of their games to give feedback directly to the developers before a game is released. For example, a development company would now hire community managers to read comments on their forums and report the ideas to the developers. Ideas could be someone saying, “Hey, there should be camouflage character customization,” for a military first person shooter game.