Naked Conversations Review

This book claims on the dust cover to discuss “how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers”. The authors however start off with two premises from The Cluetrain Manifesto (possibly one of the most bullshit filled, vapid books ever written) that:

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Conversations are where intellectual capital gets generated.

What the authors of both books fail to take into consideration is the definition of what a conversation is:
“An oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas”

First of all blogs are not oral, except for podcasts which are only one way therefore podcasts do not have an exchange of information. Blogs (ignoring that they are not oral) have the potential of having an exchange of information but only if someone posts a comment.

So the entire premise of blogs somehow being conversations is false.

Another false premise is that businesses have a need to blog. I have no interest in a blog from Wal-Mart, my grocery store, Sears, CompUSA and many other businesses that I can think of. Granted a web site might well be of use, but I see no reason to get engaged with my grocery store’s blogsphere evangelist. That seems totally pointless. What would we blog about? Carrot prices? There has to be a limit on how much knowledge one needs to take in.

I think of the blogsphere as a giant room filled with a thousand dogs, each one sniffing another dog’s butt. It may not be butt sniffing but butt kissing in the way of name dropping is almost the main content of this book. It sounds like a couple of little kids crying out “Look who we know!” and “Isn’t it cool that we all point and refer to each other’s blogs endlessly?”

Amazingly there is nothing in this book that tells you how to get started with a blog. Perhaps for some of us that is just intuitive.

If you want to read a book that intelligently discusses blogging I suggest Who Let The Blogs Out? By Biz Stone.

I do not recommend Naked Conversations unless you just love the blah blah blah of endless and repetitive name dropping. It's truly not worth wasting your money or time on.