The Great Cluetrain Robbery

Daily Ink

Stored in: In Situ

Posted On: July 10 2006

By: Bryan Partington

I find the psychology of The Cluetrain Manifesto profoundly disturbing.

There's a lot about the 1999 tract that is increasingly and demonstrably true. While its influence on how companies and individuals engage each other on the web can be easily overstated, it does accurately articulate the dialogue between many new companies and their customers, particularly on the web.

Though to be honest, that's not especially interesting to me.

"we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. we are human beings - and our reach exceeds your grasp."
- The Cluetrain Manifesto

What is interesting to me is the manifesto's intense psychology, how its tone so often defines the networked consumer as an angry know-it-all with a profound sense of entitlement.

Last week I received a boilerplate flickr mail from 'schmap', a company who uses flickr photos to populate their travel guides. The following is the full transcript of our "conversation", which began with a fairly benign if uninvited service upgrade notification:

Hi striatic,

I wrote to you last in May with the news that we had selected one of your photos for our Schmap Austin Guide. I'm writing again now to let you know about the launch of our new 'Schmap Picker', a widget for Schmap-published photographers who have their own blogs or websites. The Schmap Picker is our take on the complimentary copy many guidebook publishers offer to contributing photographers: with this tool, you can give Schmap Guides directly to your blog readers or website visitors - for free!

www.schmap.com/picker/p=34427466731N01/c=SC2011782

Clicking this link will take you to a page where you can:

i) Try out our Schmap Picker to download a Schmap Guide. (We now have SEVENTY destinations available!)
ii) Make a custom Schmap Picker for your blog, with your choice of colors, size and style.
iii) Submit a profile of your blog to be featured in the new 'Blog Partners' section on our site.

If you have any questions regarding the Schmap Picker or our new Blog Partners section, please drop me a line.

Best regards,
Ali Moss,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

.. instinctively triggering this shamelessly arrogant reply:

Ali,

Just because i let you use one of my photos does not mean i have invited you to spam me in some effort at viral promotion. You'd better seriously watch what you mass mail. Flickr is delightfully spam free and if you continue to push the limits of what is acceptable in terms of promotion .. well .. i suggest you not be surprised if people start reporting your service as a violation of Flickr's non-commercial clause.

Sincerely,

me.

.. a bit of contrition, and an explanation:

"Hi striatic,

We had a bit of a dilemma here.

On the one hand, we didn't want photographers published in guides released earlier this year to see the new 'Blog Partners' section on our site, and wonder why only photographers published in our most recent guides had been given the opportunity to appear in it.

On the other hand, there are clear marketing benefits for Schmap, and this therefore might be seen to push the limits of acceptability (as you point out).

Your advice is well taken and I appreciate you taking the time to write - I hope you can forgive the message in the light of it being a one-time only contact to earlier published photographers.

Best regards,
Ali

.. which inspired a longwinded rant:

"if i am one of the "photographers published in guides released earlier this year" and i "see the new 'Blog Partners' section on our site, and wonder why only photographers published in our most recent guides had been given the opportunity to appear in it." .. schmap could simply give me the opportunity to submit while i'm on the 'Blog Partners' page.

after all, i'd have to be on that page in order to know that i had been excluded from it.

also, the 'Schmap Picker' has nothing to do with the 'blog partners' section and seems to be a pure viral marketing play, and a pretty ham-fisted one if you ask me. i've nothing against viral marketing, so long as it is mutually beneficial to the collaborators. i don't mean to unnecessarily chide your service or other services with "photo usage notifications". especially since you aren't the only one. i believe that www.nowpublic.com/ does something similar and that other services will automate notifications in the future.

.. but the 'notification' serves as free promotion for your service. you have incentive to add photos to your guides not simply as an opportunity to make better guides, but also send out more notification/promotions.

This seems especially apparent to me because i use a CC license on all of my photos that doesn't require any personal notification and yet i received a notification anyhow.

it feels like you're treating your 'partners' more like potential marketers.

not like this is anything new, right? i mean the 'flickr badge' and 'blog this' functionality are great viral promotion for flickr. the thing is that they offer valuable functionality to flickr users first, and are avenues for marketing secondarily and only by virtue of their functionality.

i believe that schmap and ventures like it ought to adopt a similar fundamental philosophy.

you're skirting the line much more closely, so much so that i wonder if this isn't an avenue for marketing first and only offering functionality as a secondary concern.

anyhow, thank you for your response, it is much appreciated.

.. and a defensive reply:

Hi striatic,

I take all your points on board.

Regarding product/marketing, I'd like to assure you that it's a passion for product/functionality that drives us... We had a three year development cycle for the Schmap Player technology, and 18 months of intense work preparing our Schmap Guides. The bulk of our small company is still dedicated to improving both, with our main focus this year being launch of Schmap Player 2.0, a product that will let anyone use the Schmap technology to author their own mini travel guides, or collections of favorite places, complete with photos, reviews and links. Non-commercial use of Schmap 2.0 will be completely free.

We'll do our best to stay the right side of the line throughout all this.

Best,

Ali

.. resulting in humility and a suggestion:

"i've been thinking about this, and perhaps what you need is some kind of check box on your site after notification that allows photographers to select whether or not they want to hear about future updates to your service.

.. which brought the conversation to a productive conclusion:

Hi striatic,

That's a great suggestion. Thanks so much for writing to us. We will try to implement it in our next submission process.

Best,

Ali

.. A surprisingly neat conclusion to a needlessly sprawling conversational mess.

In the social web, the venues for our personal expression and art are so often tied to the whims and needs of companies. It is important for both sides to be mutually engaged, feeding off one another. If this is to be a place where we express ourselves and engage our communities, we must be impassioned in its defence.

That said, self-important chest puffing and demands, however 'justified', are not are especially productive. Honesty, civility and clarity remain the most important tools of discourse. As honest conversations begin to sporadically emerge between the people within companies and the people they serve, sometimes the best way to move forward is to lose the adversarial mindset.

There has been a lot written about how companies can better engage their customers but much less about how customers, short of activism, might better engage companies.

The Cluetrain runs both ways.

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