Cluetrain has New Clues – time for newbies to read the original!

52  We were right the first time: Markets are conversations.

53  A conversation isn’t your business tugging at our sleeve to shill a product we don’t want to hear about.

54  If we want to know the truth about your products, we’ll find out from one another.

55   We understand that these conversations are incredibly valuable to you. Too bad. They’re ours.

56  You’re welcome to join our conversation, but only if you tell us who you work for, and if you can speak for yourself and as yourself.

57 Every time you call us “consumers” we feel like cows looking up the word “meat.”

58  Quit fracking our lives to extract data that’s none of your business and that your machines misinterpret.

59  Don’t worry: we’ll tell you when we’re in the market for something. In our own way. Not yours. Trust us: this will be good for you.

60Ads that sound human but come from your marketing department’s irritable bowels, stain the fabric of the Web.

61  When personalizing something is creepy, it’s a pretty good indication that you don’t understand what it means to be a person.

62  Personal is human. Personalized isn’t.

63  The more machines sound human, the more they slide down into the uncanny valley where everything is a creep show.

64  Also: Please stop dressing up ads as news in the hope we’ll miss the little disclaimer hanging off their underwear.

Je suis Charlie. [obvious placement!]

65  When you place a “native ad,” you’re eroding not just your own trustworthiness, but the trustworthiness of this entire new way of being with one another.

66  And, by the way, how about calling “native ads” by any of their real names: “product placement,” “advertorial,” or “fake fucking news”?

67  Advertisers got along without being creepy for generations. They can get along without being creepy on the Net, too.