Mark
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 Posted: May 7, 2003 8:19 PM |
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First of all this blog is new, and represents my first experience with Movable Type. I am still tweaking these custom templates, so things may be a bit quirky for a bit.
What is this blog about? What the hell do I mean by 'rebirth of the social marketplace', you ask? First I have to tell the story about how I came to start this blog. In recent months, I have been reading a fantastic forum for webmasters, called WebMasterWorld. The most popular focuses on optimizing web pages for the Google search engine. Webmasters talk about design and link strategies, and debate the merits of new Google algorithm changes. There is a Google employee active in this forum, under the alias 'GoogleGuy'. He provides information about changes at Google (without giving away any secrets). He is well respected in the forum, and webmasters really appreciate the information he provides. In one of the posts, it was referenced that GoogleGuy, and his active participation in the forum, was mentioned in Doc Searls Weblog. Following the link in the post, I learned that Doc Searls is one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto. I had previously seen the book in bookstores, but never picked it up. Based on reading some of the blog, I decided to buy the book. I had been looking for a good business book for some time, but over the past few years, none of the books on bookshelves appealed to me, they all seemed like the same ideas in different forms. Now that I have read the book, I hestitate somewhat to call it a 'business' book, but I must it is the best 'business' book I have ever read. The book is one of the major inspirations for this blog. One of the main themes of the book is that "markets are conversations" between people. Markets used to be live places where buyers and sellers would meet and converse. Mass marketing has replaced most of this conversation, with marketing messages being broadcast to customers in the form of messages that they did not ask to receive. The web has the power to change. The new social marketplace is not bound by geography. The web is place is which people live and converse, real people interacting with one another. Companies have been slow to join in the conversation. The book is a few years old now, but neither the growth of the web nor the bursting of Internet bubble has changed the messages, which are perhaps more relevant today. Companies still take broadcast, mass-market approaches, even with their web strategies. But the revolution of the social marketplace is building, with the power to bring about "the end of business as usual", which is the subtitle of the book.
From the book and the blog, I have learned about many interesting software tools, web sites, and organizations that are poised to usher in the new social marketplace. I discuss each of these in my upcoming posts, starting with Globe Alive, a search engine that returns live people as search results. |
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