14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations.

To their inteded online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

False

Yes in ‘99 this is how companies sounded, but what made it any different from their normal communications efforts. In ‘09, they have caught on and they may not understand everything but they know that they can’t have a stauncy, inhuman voice anymore.

I agree, there are websites and web presences that, pardon my French, suck. But I am having the hardest time finding one company that I can find that doesn’t have some sort of voice to their site. It might not be a good voice, but it’s a voice.

Since the knowledge is out there that companies need to have this new “personality” to survive and they can’t figure it out on their own, they hire someone. Whether it be a 20-something college grad that understands this “stuff” or a hip agency that will do the work for a price, the room in the budget will be found.

Even the New York Times knows the importance of Social Media and Web Presence enough to hire a social media editor.

So this is another missed stop for the Cluetrain, everyone has a live voice, if they didn’t they died a long time ago. But who knew you could be paid to be a voice?