Stetoscope

In the Internet world, the event of the week was the launch of cuil. Techcrunch, Danny Sullivan, each giant of the Internet told us about David Cuil going to fight (and supposedly win) Goliath Google. One day later, the fight had not even happened… And the real evnet was that such a “buzz” had been possible.

First what is a “buzz”? In fact its quite a blurred notion. It can be defined as marketing managers dream : everybody speaks words to mouth about your product, service, company… just because you ask them for it. It seems a bit naive or at least insufficient to explain the Cuil phenomenon.

Indeed, there is no buzz just powerfull stories. Choose an evil character (Google), that is a problem because it rules its world, then describe a heroe with a special weapon cuil with a 120-billion-pages-index (it could have beenpowerset with a natural language system)… Everyone want to know about the issue of the fight, believing that David might bring back Goliath’s head once again. That is no buzz, it is a very good story.

Big blogs, just like press need to be read. We like to read good stories about titans and heroes. A good story is a story that is so emotional that will get everybody in it. And here is the key : a very good story is participative! You want to take your chance against Goliath, try cuil.com. The story was so great!

Cuil story worked that well because it ables each of us being a David. Except that the happy end was missing. As a start-up marketing manager, I will remember that great stories are helpfull to buil a community, but the promise they rise must not be deceived. In fact, it is important to choose the story that will generate the participation expected from the community.

Once upon a time…