Markets are conversations, so tell us something interesting for a change.
—The Cluetrain Manifesto
Create a remarkable product and tell a remarkable story, and people will spread the word.
—Seth Godin
If a company succeeds at the above, let’s not talk about them.
—Dave Winer
Reader Comments (15)
Interesting. But being remarkable doesn’t necessarily equal being liked, just remarked about. In the same vein, having a conversation with the market doesn’t mean that you will be universally adored.
I think the blogosphere will survive.
Yes, but Winer is complaining because Apple *is* adored. I’ve never heard him try to tone down evangelism about *his* baby, RSS.
Can’t argue with you there Brian.
Great tidbit of philosophy.
Apple has engaged the blogosphere in an amazingly successful way. They’ve created a wonderful conversation about utility and functionality in mobile devices centered around their product. It’s pure genius, and anyone who says otherwise is full of seething jealousy.
This is funny and an elementary perspective of free markets.
This is Apple’s business model. The world is free to create a better one. And when a better one is created, we will all talk about it.
You’re right. The blogosphere will eat itself. It’s already serving the first course.
Job’s is a master storyteller. He is a better storyteller than Gates or the spokespeople from Samsung, Sony, or Motorola.
If you have a remarkable product, you need a remarkable storyteller to get the word out. Having a remarkable widget doesn’t inspire an audience. The story of what it can do for YOU does!
When you say market I think winners and losers.
When I see a comment about free
markets here I laugh.
Hilarious to think that at this point of advanced capitalism someone actually uses the word “free market” to describe what big corporations sell and how they coerce us buy them.
I mean — Jobs has a cool new phone — but he also has $4.5 billion dollars in the bank. That is not a little niche player asking for permission. That’s a lot of money chasing even more money.
There are lots of people having conversations about emergency redesign of our energy systems, speculating that we are killing ourselves with hot air — methane, CO2 etc… the capitalists who profit from status quo — Exxon, Chevron etc…are not asking permission. They have throttled innovation, new ideas and green alternatives to their profit machines.
Storytelling, conversation, love are powerful community building words. Godin and sharp marketers like him have identified a constant human need for the language of communitiy.
But they are misplaced when used in the context of this “free market” .
These words have their place in human communities — places where people are peers, where they have a say about sharing resources, caring for each other. But to use them in marketing is like saying a RJ Reynolds Tobacco is part of a “family of companies.” You just have to wink at the emperor saying such crap with a straight face.
It is a con job.
If you have an adequate product and a lot of moolah — you can dominate, coerce, and suffocate any competition and innovation.
best fishes,
Timothy
I see markets as pools of buyers and sellers with infinite opportunity only limited by desire and creativity. I don’t view markets as zero-sum games with winners and losers. To me, that’s victim mentality.
There’s a whole lot of venture money, time, energy, effort, hopes, dreams, and innovation based on belief in markets being free. The concept that a better widget can be invented and sold drives innovation. It creates competition, which provides choice.
If you want to see open markets in force, work in the hi-tech sector for a while. There, you will see big companies succumb to greatly smaller companies who build and offer something better. It’s commonplace.
Apple creates, innovates, and opens new markets. They create “cool” things people want to talk about. Jobs promotes them well and if someone wants to out-Apple Apple, they’re free to do it.
It’s a fun conversation, better suited for a forum other than CopyBlogger.
Brian, you’re spot on with this post.
dont get it
Tim, thanks for dropping by and sucking the life, blood, and soul out of everyone’s non-green body.
You bemoan,”That’s a lot of money chasing even more money,” yet, on your website you say you’ve sold 185,000 posters and for us to tell our friends” (so you, too, can chase even more money)
You continue, “If you have an adequate product and a lot of moolah — you can dominate, coerce, and suffocate any competition and innovation.” I’d bet organically grown apples to oranges, you’d dominate, coerce, and suffocate any of us that didn’t wholeheartedly adapt your green vision if you were to come into power.
Lambast the system all you want; you’re using a computer built by a BIG CORPORATION right now, you’ve set up a website with e-commerce (ie CAPITALIST) functionality, and everything you wear, drive, and read was created by similar BIG CORPORATIONS.
He who is without sin, like you, let him moVe to a communist country.
Regards
Buck
Despite all that, I think blogosphere will stand solid….
Mystery
http://mystic-pandemonium.blogspot.com/
Yes, I too think the blogosphere will be just fine. As long as people shed this utopian view that social media changes human nature.
Everyone still has an agenda, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as we are forthright about it. Mr. Winer gave us a clear illustration of his agenda, and yet chose to try to tell us what to think and what to talk about in the process.
Winer’s missing the point entirely. Social media is about pumping up what’s cool in real time. It doesn’t change anything—it’s just news, information, and sharing right now.
Here he is, dissing Apple love, which has arguably reached warp speed thanks to all its new media attention.
Hell, if it weren’t for new media, I wouldn’t have bought an Apple.
The visual metaphor I see here is a sweaty, aging Dave Winer pushing a giant human snowball of kids sporting iPods up a hill with a 75 degree slope.
The lesson here is that you don’t fight the waves and trends that emerge from new media—you ride them.
Wimer comes off a little bit “sour grapes,” but he shares some razor sharp observations about lock-in shadow side of the iPhone announcment.
Yes, I think their iPhone design is outstanding and certainly newsworthy. Yes, I love Apple computers and OS X and couldn’t imagine using or buying anything else for the foreseeable future.
But I can’t completely cheer because I sense that behind the beautiful glossy design, Apple wants to keep you stuck in their pretty sandbox. On the desktops they have the codependent iLife suite, proprietary formats, DRM and the iTunes music store.
Now Cingular is calling the shots: Apple and the consumers are locked into multi-year contracts and will do and pay whatever they ask.
The iPhone would be way cooler if it was unlocked so we had a choice of competitive service providers, and it was open to 3rd party software. It would be a home run, and probably would make money without twisting anyones arm. But they prefer to lock software developers and other service providers out of the ‘conversation” at the expense of the market (consumers).
It seems very anti-Cluetrain, to me.
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