Giles Turnbull writes in The Guardian on how that Cluetrain stuff worked out now that it’s been five years since the site went up. Good article.

I’m always a bit awkward talking about Cluetrain. I think it was basically right about the value of the Net at a time when the media and most businesses were (IMO) insistently wrong. But, for example, the other day at a conference someone very sweetly thanked me, crediting Cluetrain as the inspiration for the company he’d founded. That’s great to hear, but it also invokes my Flight or Polite instinct. Cluetrain tried to articulate ideas that were just below the surface (and occasionally above the surface) in the Web community, but now the co-authors sometimes get credit for the ideas.

Also, I don’t like reading what I write. That explains why at the end of The Guardian article I’m quoted as saying that I don’t remember what was in the book. Of course I don’t! Do you think authors sit around rereading their books? My books terrify me because I know they contain wrong ideas and passages that read like sandpaper, yet they’re still out there for anyone to read. (And then I read someone like Steve Johnson and think I should just give up entirely. Sigh.)

Categories: Uncategorized dw