I'm looking for the title of a book that talked about corporate
communication, and that was much discussed in 1999 or 2000.  I think
there were three or four authors, and my impression is that they all
had one-syllable names.  They also had a really good website on
corporate communication (though I'm not sure if that was the term they
used).

The book talked about how the public didn't want to hear centralised
corporate-speak - and that in the age of instantaneous communication,
internet groups etc, it was easy for the real story about a company to
get out, and that companies needed to focus more on empowering their
people (largely staff) to do lots of the communicating for them.  It
included lots of examples, and one in particular (I think the company
in the example made either whitegoods or cars) which talked about an
employee who happened across customers complaining about his company's
goods/service on a website.  He joined in the forum, explained the
reason for the apparent slackness (they had to wait for head-office
parts or something) and turned the discussion around - all in his
spare time.

Can anyone tell me the name of the book?

Hello.

The book was "The Cluetrain Manifesto" (2000) by Christopher Locke,
Rick Levine, Doc Searls and David Weinberger.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738202444/

The web site was (and is):
http://www.cluetrain.com

Here's how it looked in 2000, courtesy of the Internet Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000229141743/http://www.cluetrain.com/

The whole book is now online at:
http://www.cluetrain.com/book/index.html 

The part that you mentioned about an employee turning around a
negative web discussion is in Chapter 3.  You were right. It was a car
company (Saturn, specifically).
http://www.cluetrain.com/book/talk.html


---------------
search strategy:
"four authors" companies "internet communications" 

Thanks.

That was fantastic, comprehensive and so very, very fast.  Thank you very much.