Blog-to-blog Post #1

This morning I came across an entry on Scobleizer's blog talking about the "Open Source Marketing Manisfesto" published on the Change This website. You might be wondering, much as I was, what do open source and marketing have to do with one another? One is based on the concepts of openness, sharing, and flowing in the direction the community is moving in, while the other seems to be geared towards directed and controlled messages. Can you guess where this is heading?

Remember back to our class discussion on Wednesday June 15th (Alex discussed the, Cluetrain Manisfesto) and you can see how adopting the principles touted by the open source community could transform the way that marketing strategies are created and executed in the near future. As a matter of fact, the Internet, through blogs, online diaries, homemade films, etc., has already started to remove some of the traditional control that companies have had on the branding of their products. It remains to be seen how marketing will adjust to the Internet and to the openness and "loss of control" it brings. Will companies respond like VW when it sued two Englishmen for the advert they created about the VW Polo, or will it be like Apple and allow the advert created by George Masters to flow freely over the Internet.

P.S. - Eric S. Raymond, President of the Open Source Initiative, is a signatory of the Cluetrain Letters.