Giles Turnbull spoke to the authors of the seminal Cluetrain Manifesto - five years after it first appeared online.

The Manifesto set sparks flying among the internet community when it first appeared online in April 1999. Its 95 theses were a direct challenge to the business world. "Markets are conversations," the first stated. Wise up, corporations. Your customers are talking to each other, and laughing. At you.

Thanks to the internet, people were now able to communicate with one another - comparing products, prices and services - faster than corporations could churn out press releases. The interconnected market was fast becoming smarter and more adaptable. In a business environment dominated by marketing campaigns and press releases, there were real people connecting to one another, holding conversations inside and outside the accepted edges of their organisations. The implication was that the wise company chairman or chief executive had to take swift action to free up these human voices. A clued-up company would engage in the online discussion, not ignore it.

The question is has anything changed in the last five years? Was Cluetrain on time? This is important to us, as the Big Blog Company is based on the principle that a person with a human voice speaking from within a company would have far more impact on that company's reputation than a multimillion dollar public relations campaign and that companies have to relinquish some, if not all, control of their carefully fostered image, and let their employees talk directly to the public.

Doc Searls quotes some 'clueful' examples such as Apple's direct retail stores where people can bring their broken down computers. Microsoft that has 500 or so employees who maintain public weblogs, especially the Channel 9 site www.channel9.msdn.com, where the developers of Longhorn, the next version of Windows, engage outsiders in their conversations. Also, Google, apparently, has done many things right, including talking to users as though they are actual people. Let's propagate that phrase...

And the final, most important conclusion is the authors 'endorsement' of weblogs:

Weblogs, says Weinberger, are the unexpected proof of the Cluetrain's central idea that people are drawn to the internet because it gives everyone a voice. The only thing that prevents more companies setting up more employee-controlled weblogs is the fear of litigation. "There are genuine issues of legal accountability that need to be sorted out".

Well, we can do that. That's good news for the Big Blog Company.

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