TechCrunch Europe’s Mike Butcher and I just finished conducting a short video interview with entrepreneur and author Andrew Keen about the end of Web 2.0 and the dawn of a new age of individualism, driven primarily by Twitter.
[Mike Butcher writes] The controversial, anti-Web 2.0, figure of Andrew Keen spoke at the Next Web in Amsterdam and outlined some of the themes that he is developing for his next book. Keen is most famous for deriding the ‘cult of the amateur’, as he calls it, or rather the explosion of social media which arose with the new platforms to emerge alongside what became known as Web 2.0.
In a long speech – without notes – he talked about a new age of individualism. With the end of the industrial revolution, “we”, essentially are now “the product”.
He said we are entering a “revolutionary age in which traditional, industrial media is being swept away by individuals.” That sounds familiar to his previous pronouncements.
But his speech hit a crescendo when he practically shouted across the conference hall that “Web 2.0 is fucked! Web 2.0 doesn’t work – it doesn’t generate revenue.” Afterwards, he repeated the charge in the video above.
Keen believes traditional media dies with Web 2.0 and although technology enables self expression, is “not a viable media economy.” In fact he claimed even “TechCrunch, the leading Web 2.0 cheerleaders have come to the conclusion that YouTube [for instance] does not work”, does not create profit. We may have to check that…
But, ironically perhaps for some observers, Keen is now a fully-fledged fan of Twitter.
In fact he called Twitter the “nail in the coffin of Web 2.0″. He said it’s “the future of individual media in the age of the individual… a future when individuals become brands. People with skills are able to sell their skills on the network. I call this real time social media.”
But this is also “intimidating and scary” to him. It is “Darwin and Marx at the same time.” He thinks Twitter is “Feudal” in that those with large numbers of followers behave like barons of old, picking those they favour at random…
My thoughts: Sitting at the back of the conference with my Twitter handle (@mikebutcher) emblazoned on it, it was hard to argue against his view that we are indeed in a new age of the individual! However, far greater societal forces than Web 2.0 have given rise to this (Reagan, the end of the cold War, the rise of the market etc), so it’s equally possible to say this was happening well before Web 2.0 came along. What is perhaps most interesting about Keen is his simultaneous enthusiasm for Twitter and his warning – (there’s always a warning really) – that Twitter also creates huge inequality. In the video I make the point that being @’d by someone Twitter-famous can actually bring me more followers – so in the famous phrase, a rising tide lifts all boats. But he argues that this gives the power to those most followed. That may well be true, but there is a lot of power in having a small but influential or just plain useful following, is there not? This harks back to a previous argument, played out by Scoble and Loic Le Meur recently, about whether the power of Twitter is in the numbers you can pull. Frankly the jury is out and it’s an argument Keen still needs to address if his thesis is to hold water.
I can’t watch the video at the moment, so I may be making an undue assumption here, but does Keen explicitly define “Web 2.0″? That seems requisite to calling it fucked.
Of course web 2.0 is f*cked, doesn’t he know that Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle of Federated Media have already moved on?
Web 2.0 + World = Web Squared
http://www.bbc....ing_web_20.html
I don’t see how this is a reply to my post.
You asked if Keen explicitly defines Web 2.0 and I’m telling you it doesn’t matter.
Of course it matters. Web 2.0 is such an abstract term, used in a myriad of different ways. If he’s talking about social networking, et. all failing to monetize, then sure, whatever. But to some people, Web 2.0 is just a way of doing websites. Is that way of doing websites fucked? Without defining what he means by “Web 2.0″, he can’t make a claim as to whether it’s fucked.
it’s not all about you, Lou.
Web2.0 is not ‘just a way of doing websites’ it’s the social web. You think 3/4th of the people who use facebook know or care that they it heavily uses BOSH? That twitter was written in Rails (and not correctly, I might add). NO.
It is fucked, why? Because it’s a pipe dream, it’s the second .com bubble, except here, it’s even worse because no one (or very few) have a business model that could actually work once the VC money runs out. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?
If I had to define Web2.0, I would call it “ya, we’ll think of something…’
I surfed http://www.clasilistados.org and was amazed!
Check it out
CL
I would surise you are easily entertainedif indeed you wrote the site.
What amazes you the most about your site?
I can’t watch the video too…
George Orwell called, he wants his plot back.
LOL good One!
Why did they dig him up?
You lost me at Academic. This guys is an idiot, like most academics, likes to talk a lot. Web 1 and Web 2 are nothing in comparison of what is coming in the next 20 years. Its happened before and is about to happen again.
Their are on sacred cows. All industries and will turned on their heads with Economy 2.0. Why do you think we are in a recession.
I have a very long post coming that will be breaking it all down in the next week or so.
Either intentionally or not, you actually just did a a pretty good job of proving his point.
Nobody knows who you are. You are a guy commenting semi-anonymously in a comment section, one of the unwashed masses. You have neither established yourself nor gained a following. Nobody cares what you have to say. You can “tease” a comment you shall make later, but nobody even knows who you are and can’t be bothered to even feign interest.
Now, if one of the TC crew, or someone else with an actual name made a similar tease, we might think, “oh, I’ll have to check back. I want to see what he has to say.” They are the “kings” as Mr. Keen defines it, and they hold the power.
That is the difference between UGC (which is, I think, what Mr. Keen is referring to as Web 2.0) and professionally generated content, and while I’m not sure if that’s what Mr. Keen was getting at in his longer speech, it makes me wonder if there’s a pendulous swing-back coming towards heat and attention put on professionally made internet content. Because although insubstantial, that heat and attention is what funds startups and gets new projects made.
But those are just musings, and I’m just a random commenter here. :p
Good comment comment!
You must be a consultant or a jounalist holding on to a dream. That’s the issue with you and Keen, you both feel that if some consultant, journalist, or other doesn’t create the UGC then its crap or not important.
Thus the reason for UGC. Very few people had the access and the ability to be heard, thus making a name for themselves.
To think that the web will not taken seriously until its converted to the same jacked up shit we have today with the media and the few always dominating the masses is ludicrous.
The problem with theory is that things online are not the same as offline. All the tools to succeed are available for next to nothing. Ask Mr. Keen to find the ten people who dominate YouTube everyday over and over without fail?
Our reality is what we make it. And if generation Y decides that the model that they will all be famous or carve out their niche via the web then that is what will happen.
What percentage of successful startups are lead by the same founders over and over?
And finally. I might be wrong here, but didn’t newspaper journalist hold this power for the past 40 years? Where are they now? If Keen’s theory is correct then newspapers and journalist shouldn’t be dropping like flies, especially since they already had this so called power of the few. They should of just kept growing and growing choking off anyone and everyone.
Its called the long tail or fringe. Keen and Justin must be feeling like they are about to be replaced.
Shaka, when the walls fell Keen!
Experts have always “followed” lesser experts and the amateurs. “Web 2.0″, or really, the web and the newer tools and sites we’re now making has all but helped to lubricate the discovery element. As such, “2.0″ isn’t a question of new, it is a question of scale. Never in the past have we exchanged information on the scale that we are today.
Saying “web 2.0 is fucked” is like saying “yesterday is gone! today is here!”. Who gives a fuck? Tomorrow will come and then the same will be true, until there is no tomorrow. Culture is often labeled as a time period, but its influences will always be eternal. That is the nature of the game. Now, web 2.0 has made information, people discovery and the resulting social interactions easier then the past. It’s not “fucked” its just going to be folded into the every changing culture and reintroduced as mainstream elements. I’d hardly call that fucked. I’d call that successful innovation.
“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?”
–David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920’s
Some other famous comments about innovation being bat shit crazy, but ultimately adopted into mainstream society and not even thought twice about today:
http://www.scri...ogy-Predictions
My definition of Web 2.0 is online applications designed to enable the distribution of real-time content from the individual to the group asynchronously.
Now the fact is that never has and never will there be a day in which the individual is more powerful than the larger community/institution to which he belongs, whether it’s online or offline. All opinions expressed by twitterers belong to twitter. At any point twitter could start filtering your posts, suspend your account, or actively promote those posts which are inline with the views of twitter stakeholders. These are the “fascist” and “darwinian” mechanisims that have always existed, as the big fish determines what’s best for the big fish. They will continue to exist regardless of the format.
So, ultimately yes, Web 2.0 is fucked. But our fundamental desire to be judged as individuals by collections of other individuals remains unthreatened.
Jeremy said…
My definition of Web 2.0 is online applications designed to enable the distribution of real-time content from the individual to the group asynchronously.
Web-2.0 or Web-xxx is just a catch-phrase and no more. It is not an industry standard such as an IEEE approved one for example.
Whenever I hear someone saying, Web-2.0 application, then I ask a question, what’s the meaning of that. Mostly, the answers all come back to social networkings related applications. It is a meaningless term and people should concentrate developing cutting-edge functionalities or applications rather than adopting catch-phrase terms in the hope of enticing VCs to invest in their startup business.
I should ammend it with: “…without requiring any special technical knowledge.”
But no, it doesn’t mean just social networking sites. As it might be stated on an SAT: Social networking sites are all Web 2.0, but not all Web 2.0 are social networking sites.
I don’t consider TechCrunch a social networking site, but definitely a Web 2.0 application.
Anyway, my point wasn’t so much as to define Web 2.0, but to say that “Web 2.0″ is the current mechanism for doing what we, as individuals, have always done – try to prop ourselves up and gain favor (aka. power) in the eyes of the governing figure.
Keen is saying that a new fascism is on the horizon and I say that it has always existed in the sense that however we express ourselves as individuals there is a greater entity that determines the value of that voice whether it’s through butts in the pews or followers on twitter and everything in between.
Aren’t we ALL F*Cked?
This guy has money and no ime for a good haircut as well.
Son, ain’t a one of us knowing all the others so much so it’s paranoidly moot and a bit flatulent to harp about. Just the Interdamnednet. Hoorah.
@Justin
“it makes me wonder if there’s a pendulous swing-back coming towards heat and attention put on professionally made internet content.”
- This has already happened. Blogs like Techcrunch, Mashable, Huff Post are all professionally made internet content now. They may have started out as an Amateur producing content, but then, no one ever starts as a professional creating content. The process always starts with an amateur, that over time, becomes a professional.
I don’t think we’ll see any more blogging amateurs become professionals/experts any time soon, but people will become professionals/experts in different online mediums, the different mediums that I think @jason is talking about when he says “Web 1 and Web 2 are nothing in comparison of what is coming in the next 20 years”.
@jason “The problem with theory is that things online are not the same as offline. All the tools to succeed are available for next to nothing.”
I disagree, to an extent… Look at fanzines – the rise of the amateur to professional in fanzines looks very similar to what happens in blogs and “web 2.0″. The materials for making fanzines were available for next to nothing. Fanzines had little niches, just as blogs today, and many fanzine writes transitioned from the amateur sphere, into the professional journalism sphere.
@jason “And finally. I might be wrong here, but didn’t newspaper journalist hold this power for the past 40 years? Where are they now? If Keen’s theory is correct then newspapers and journalist shouldn’t be dropping like flies, especially since they already had this so called power of the few. They should of just kept growing and growing choking off anyone and everyone.”
- I think newspaper journalists still hold this power, look at Jemima Kiss, Charles Arthur etc. – very influential bloggers/journalists/writers in the UK. And that is the point, they are bloggers and journalists, all at the same time. The line has blurred. Arrington, is also a blogger and a journalist – he didn’t start out as a professional journalist but I would argue he is now. The lines are all jumbled and blurred. But however blurred the lines are, there are definitely an elite that hold the power.
I’m giving my two cents, but as @justin noted, no body cares what I say, and what I say doesn’t carry as much weight as what Arrington might say.
Justin said…
This guys is an idiot, like most academics, likes to talk a lot. Web 1 and Web 2 are nothing in comparison of what is coming in the next 20 years.
Hey dude, it is academics who invent new technologies to advance civilization, which benefits the non-inventors such as you & me. Stop being ignorant. Now, think about Google. They were academics. There is nothing cutting edge today that were invented by non-academics. Almost the majority of inventions can be traced to academic origin.
Hehe, you might ask yourself how the computer chip inside the computer that you used for posting your message here at TC were invented and designed. Short answer is: Academic knowledge. The history of micro-electronics revolution can be attributed to the tremendous work of academics who had gone to Nobel Prizes winners in Physics for their inventions. Pioneers as Dr. William Shockley, Dr. John Bardeen and Dr. Walter Brattain invented the transistors (semiconductor devices) which they shared the Physics Nobel Prize for their work . This invention lead to the birth of Silicon Valley.
Cuttin-edge software, can be traced to academic work. Amazon revolutionized automated item recommendations, well those techniques were invented by academics not some lone hackers. I am not saying that everything academics say, we should follow blindly, but don’t deride academics just because you happen to disagree with a commentary of just one person.
Correction. My reply above was meant for Jason and not Justin.
Thats why MBA programs are spitting out such great business successes. Why do think that nobody goes to school anymore to learn to program?
I disagree. While its true that the web 2.0 currently does not generate much revenue I think that will change in the next few years. Corporate America has to first become comfortable with the model and then figure out the best way to monetize. In fact the internet as a whole is still relatively new.
No offense sir, but I’m sick of these old people saying that things in our technological age are “still new”.
Look, I understand what it means. It’s only been around for x – 20 years, we haven’t even begun to harvest what it’s capable of, but in those same reguards, we laugh about old forms of “change” still being around. Like take even the CD, we had it for what 5 years before the DVD came along and replaced it, now we’re at the point where Blu-Rays are attempting to hang on to the physical form of media because digital media is quickly taking over.
It’s funny because we’ll explain how “that technology” is still relatively new, yet a war that is fought for over a year becomes “old”, and that’s all this era seems to be, a war of the information. Everything that’s new today will be older than steam engines by tomorrow. The fact that we can send whatever bit of information we want, to where ever we want, when ever we want is quickly making our “gaps” between eras or pinacles a thing of the past. What use to take us 20 years to accomplish is now being completed and reinovated while we sleep, practically.
But seriously, to bring it back to the topic of Mr. Keen, the man has a point, whether we like it or not. The social age that we seem to have fallen into has a bleak outlook for Corporate Amer- no, Corporate Everyone. But, history always has a way of repeating itself, and team corporate always has a way of turning profit from something as individual as the digital social age or “Web 2.0″, and in time, the history books will have read, “For a brief period some doubted the power of social outlets, but now we are all thanking those behind the social, individual, media driven “Web 2.0″ sites for boosting our economy back to what it was before.”
For the record:
Routed computing and networking required to build an internet- late 1960s
Most of the human interface devices and GUI technologies were introduced or conceptualized in the 1960s
Radio waves were theorized in the 1860s
The first inadvertant ‘recordings’-autophonograms(?) or tracings of sound patterns made by the French and extrapolated recently by scientists as crude audio were made from the 1850s until the phonograph era began.
Cathode ray tubes, mechanical scanning, mechanical television, ~20-48 Hz scanning on AM to practical all-electronic television (EMi-Marconi System ‘A’ as used by the BBC) c. 1880-1935
FM-in development late Teens and 1920s with the genesis of the FM band of today being the ‘high fidelity’ Apex service around the 20 Mhz area that began converting to experimental FM stations as the 30s developed, later around 45 MHz and finally all the then fully licensed stations were moved to 88-108 MHz just after World War II.
Cellular: Theories for this radiotelephone predate WW Ii. By the late sixties technologies come into existance or an refined enough to reach a key point in 1973 for successful testing. I think Bell Canada was studying in also. The first cellphone weighed a few pounds but since nothing is new I’m sure the first cellular call went something like, “AT&T Bell Labs…” Hey, guys this is ( ) at Motorola. You won’t believe this S***! I’m calling from my CAR, and we’ve been picking up some fine chicks…you gotta get down here, man!
I’m not sure I have to finish this essay….
This guy protests too much, I can’t say I like the cut of his jib. If you watch more than 4 minutes him does he become less negative and talk about solutions?
I’ve always believed that with the growth of the behemoths like Google, the idea of the web making us all free, equal and empowered will diminish. But this is not really any different to any other area of life. Whether we’re talking about our dependency on supermarkets, Energy suppliers, or the government.
don’t worry, you didn’t miss much. nice remark, btw
i just installed Web 2.0 SP1, codenamed ‘twitter’ and it said “by this man’s logic, ashton kutcher is the most talented actor of all time”
academics are always best preserved in their labs. please do not let them out
Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
If they get you good, then BY GOD you deserved it!
At any given point in time and in every possible field, there have always been dominant figures; people or companies that hold more power than the rest of us. Power that we as followers, readers, voters, consumers or customers have given them. What’s new about that?
The web, to my understanding, promises an equal opportunity to all, not actual equality…
I don’t agree with his fantacism over twitter, which is a 140 blogging tool, and “blog post” is not referred to as “tweets,” but I totally kind of agree that YouTube can’t make money and therefore web 2.0 maybe. I think web 2.0 have serious problem making money and I think Twitter is also part of web 2.0, but they are changing the concept. User participation is important, but centralized information/news is essential. I also think Twitter can’t make money because it is also web 2.0. The whole thing can’t make money (user participation).
What Twitter has with Feudalism.
Beyond my understanding.
don’t worry, you are not alone
No more than fans of a movie star.
Somebody likes their crackers with vodka and lime.
no,no,no,why web2.0 is fucked…web2.0 is so great
“Web 2.0 is fucked! Web 2.0 doesn’t work – it doesn’t generate revenue.”
long live twitter
which doesn’t generate revenue
wait for for my next book
yeah, the problem with him, and most of you; is you’ve never tried umakeitcool.com sell, make money; buy something, give money to a friend; and, we’ll have a p2p module out soon letting people resell and make money.
we ain’t web2.0 we ain’t anything; expect programmer dudes living in san francisco, who want to sell what we make.
Interesting viewpoint. Often though, viewpoints as strong as this on such rapidly changing environments, tend to focus on the “vector” of the current situation, rather than the ultimate destination. A little like looking at the rise or fall of a stock market over 24 hours and forecasting the future based upon it.
He mentioned the “twitter service” but for a moment I thought he said “twitter surface” which strikes me as a better analogy. To explain:
The inequality of the “old world” (facist or feudal) was there because the channels of information were sparse, difficult to navigate and tightly controlled by the “powers that be”. While we’ve been through Web 2.0 and DO appear to be returning to a state where the talent will have most control (or reach), we HAVE opened many more channels – or rather created a pure “surface” upon which anyone can make their ripples and reach an audience (which can change in size instantaneously according to the quality or talent of the originator). Hence, it’s not really useful to cite “the talent” as being in control, since that set of people changes every day. You may as well say “anyone can do it”! Which is what we want.
“Successful” facism and feudalism tended to create powerful people and make it difficult to wrest power from them. The difference now is that power is more difficult to retain without good cause.
regardless of whether you agree with him or not, he is quite a captivating speaker…
I think his talent equals lots of followers on twitter philosophy is a load of crap though seeing that Ashton Kutcher has 800,000 +
the speaker said talented people get more followers.
You assume that ashton has more followers because he is a talented actor, but in reality his talent for promoting himself is what is getting him these followers.
Most actors and actresses are not talented at acting, but they are good promoters.
Student body election garbage.
Fez was much funnier.
“Mike Butcher and myself just finished conducting a short video interview ”
Butcher and I. We say, I just finished, not myself just finished.
spot on!
@Matthew and @igniman – THANK YOU. What an egregious grammatical error to make in a story’s lede. Hmmmm, do you think that’s the sort of thing Keen refers to in The Cult of the Amateur?
What the hell’s a Lede?
Does it cure your headache with extra strength.
Ah, scuse me guv’na…FORTITUDE
Almost lost the brain left me under this bloody at
While grammatically incorrect, this form of usage was used even by Shakespeare himself. Try coloring outside the lines once in a while.
Nice catch, got it up in a hurry … in my defense, I’m not a native English speaker so I’m really cool with being corrected.
Updated the post, thanks.
All joking aside, this is precisely the argument for the kind of gatekeepers (editors, producers) that exist in traditional media that Keen DOES make in his book. @Robin – props for fixing.
@Lou Natick – generally one has to know the rule before one can gleefully break it. And the English language has changed a lot in four centuries. Careful you don’t end up hoisted on your own petard there, buddy.
What sort of tard…oh rot I’ll bugger off on that
@Mike Butcher: Your last sentence should read ‘We say “I just finished”, not “myself just finished”.’
I’d love to see the comments on this one, lol.
What nonsense. The video is full of contradictions. How is web 2.0 more feudal than Rupert Murdoch? Keen himself says talented people will attract followers, which demonstrates the new equality of opportunity offered by blogs, Twitter, etc. People will discover ways to monetize, and they are unlikely to be the print media companies who are close to being financially prostrate and behind the curve.
Too Point Oh
Too Point Oh
TOO POINT OH !!!!!!!!!!
Two Point OH NOOOOOOOOOO!
Web 2.0 = Mustang GT 4.7?
Refined but not 5.0?
Feudalism, he is talking about is basically influentational bloggers tend to have more followers and less influential ones don’t have, and that is inequality in its nature. That is i think true. Like he was saying, anyone can open a twitter, but certain people like celebrities, good bloggers will have 1 million followers and that is feudalistic, where that influential person holds substantial influence. I guess it is meritocracy. I’m not really worried about people gaining power because of their abilities and followers, I just want to know how people can make money using web 2.0 or through any other mechanism.
Wow, you guys are starting to sound like communists. Stop bemoaning this “inequality” that is spurning competition. And no matter what anyone says, competition is good. And for those in “power”, it’s not easy to stay there like it was in the feudal days.
There are no birthrights on the Internet. If the net is a feudal state, it’s one where lords rise and fall on a daily basis. Where land changes hands in nano chunks at dizzying rates. And where 12 year old girls can lay waste to entire kingdoms.
Enough about that <| (
Twitter, from an empowerment perspective, is sort of like People magazine. Taylor Swift was in there a few months back giving advice on love. She is all of what, 18 or 19? Who the hell cares what she says? She is however, empowered like those people with significant followers on Twitter.
Keen’s is now empowered too but I am not paying attention to what he says because he is F*cked.
Agree completely. The assumed power that Twitterati have is the power individuals choose to endow them with. It doesn’t matter how many people are listening if it’s not the ones that matter.
He is right. And the reason is because — yes, many are called, we can all go on Twitter. But few are chosen to be rebroadcast on MSM or tech media. So the influencers have terribly disproportionate powers.
And all of this injustice is fueled by block-follow, which @ajkeen himself uses, and therefore ensures that the punditocracy keeps power, the news aggregators really have enormous power to skew the news even as they pretend it’s all independent.
Of course, we can try to go around Keen’s follow- blocks on blogs and such, but he’s got the lecture circuit/Techcrunch coverage thing sewn up.
Digital Darwinism…digital fascism…digital whatever…
Technocommunism will do, too, Andrew, don’t be afraid of calling it what it is, to explain how you, in the New Class, benefit.
What was yer 1st F*Ckin’ Clue!!
)
WEB3D.0 is da way to Go!!*********
PAR-CHEEZ-E
I know everyone probably thinks this guy is a quack but he makes some valid points about “individualism” and the new revolution of where things are heading. It’s like something from a sci-fi movie where you see everyone working from home, etc.
I think we’re heading in that direction. Small businesses have been screwed over by larger companies by the dozen by being drowned out to the point that they can’t compete. Smaller businesses have learned that collaborating together and building a network of friends and smaller businesses allow them to expand their prominence on the web and potentially compete with larger businesses. In essence they can undermine a larger business by the sheer lack of cost of their online business and innate ability to network and build a social network. Traditional businesses fail to connect on this level.
For example, a lot of these businesses are joining Twitter just to spam their services. This is an ultimate fail if there is no human bonding in the twitter stream.
I’m not saying the little guy is going to destroy Nike or Disney. I just think it’s the markets way of making room for everyone in the bigger slice of the pie. It will be interesting to see where we are in just 5 years from now. Everything is booming and happening so rapidly.
It will be interesting to see what happens with youtube, facebook, etc in the coming years.
Branden, exactly. Large corporate behemoths were created because they profited from barriers to scale that an analog connected economy of primarily physical goods presents. What this new digital environment provides is the ability to interconnect, scale and deliver and much lower marginal costs.
What we will see is the rise of the small businesses, once again, that service a “village” that is not necessarily geo-limited. Will their success scale to the levels of the large corporations dominating today? No. But they will be more nimble and respond to their market faster.
Definitely agree with Keen about the “feudal” nature of social networks and where the power consolidates. But, and an important but, the barriers to obtaining this leverage are much lower than in days of old. There is more mobility between segments of this digital society. You don’t need to raise the physical funds to purchase large plots of land and organize militia.
What a load of crap this video is.
1) Yes, web 2 is fucked, it was and will always be nothing more than a “trend” that makes no revenue
2) Twitter is nothing but hype, it’s useless and again, … nothing but a “trend” that makes no revenue.
Thank you, please drive thru *eyeroll*
Web 2.0 does generate profit, it just doesn’t flow to all the players in the right way yet. The formulas will change.
Apple and AT&T are making money from Web 2.0 – Facebook and Youtube drove a lot of iPhone sales. Web 2.0 enabled this ecosystem
Netflix on my Tivo, more Tivo sales, more Netflix subscriptions. Web 2.0
Facebook and twitter on my WiFi photo frame or Internet TV http://www.framechannel.com is a web 2.0 app that drives device sales.
Scanner sales are way up – scanning photos onto facebook driving that.
Point is, Web 2.0 is causing lots of money to change hands. It may not always flow the way it should or the way we would like it to but its flowing.
Ad markets always ebb and flow but companies will always want to reach their audience and if their audience is on YouTube or Facebook, the will find a way. May not be the way it works today but someone will find a way and that someone will be rich. GBA!
“What’s Techcrunch?” – funny. Actually, you can make money out of YouTube, ask Chad Hurley.
Everybody is looking to generalize out the wazoo when that is usually a pointless endeavor.
90% of everything is crap. 98% of new ideas won’t make money. Some good stuff is always there. Period.
End of discussion. End of pretentious shallow superpundtry. (Oh, how I wish.)
You misspelled the last word which I don’t even recognize in the first place.
Nobody’s used the word ‘asshat’ yet. It seems as though it would fit although it’s not part of my normal vernacular. What is the depth of the colloquialism trending toward in this sample audience?
Call my peeps.
please note: also the only interesting interview here. ….
I broadly agree with Branden. But it’s all a bit Wizard of Oz.
Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow the twitter-brick road
Follow the twitter-brick, follow the twitter-brick
Follow the twitter-brick road.
In the end Twitter isas Twitter does and the users dictate by follow!
I’LL GET YOU, MY TWITTY!
and your little BLOG TOO!
@ jonF, well said! Positive direction, thinking and outlook will help to turn things around. True start-up spirit!
Isn’t it possible that the current problems with monetizing Web 2.0 are being attributed to the medium rather than to the economic forces that drove it? Web 2.0 startups were fueled by the same Dot-Com excesses that fueled the Tulipmania that accompanied the Internet boom. That vector of entry may have simultaneously allowed Web 2.0 to grow rapidly in the short run, and also shoot itself in the foot in the long run. The excessive amount of venture capital thrown at Web 2.0, combined with the Dot-Com mantra of “the most eyeballs fast at any cost” have resulted in a climate where users expect to get everything to free. That arcane climate has a feature that is peculiar to the strategy, not the medium. If you can’t monetize your venture through advertising your screwed since the customers won’t pony up any cash. To blame this economic trap on the technology and services used in and provided by Web 2.0 is a dubious assertion at best.
It will take a few years of the current economic climate to decondition the current user base from expecting everything for free. As many of the Web 2.0 ventures that provide free services are pulled, even by big notables like Yahoo (Jump Cut, Yahoo Live, etc.), they will become more willing to pony up at least a few bills for quality services they want. Only then can we adequately assess the value of Web 2.0. Now in defense of Andrew Keen he does indicate he is talking about the monetization model I highlight above, but if he is assuming that Web 2.0 has to follow that model or is defined by that model, then that logic is questionable.
You make a good point. Charging fees for content is possible, in fact Wall Street Journal does that and some other ones. The thing with WSJ is that is is mostly financial and technical in certain respects, so people can pay for that stuff, but most general newspapers like Wash post, ny times are having hard to charging for content, because people will just to go news.yahoo.com and read it because the news are pretty much same (e.g. stocks went down today) and because charging for fees will drive away traffic, advertising revenue (if any) will decline. It is possible to charge for news for instance, if it is significantly different than other news sources, otherwise I personally don’t care where I get news because they are all similar. I think that is dilemma that faces fees.
I think charging fee to offer a news is still pretty hard. Personally i will be like screw them and go to some website. It has to have significant competitive advantage. Lose traffic, charge fees. No fees, keep/increase traffic. Lose traffic, lose ad.
Agreed. Until you can’t just go to news.yahoo.com anymore, or if things change and to get the premium content you have to pay, nothing will change. But I never thought I’d see a web giant like Yahoo start cutting major services so those changes may be coming. If not at least in a major horizontal like general news, then in verticals like financial news, etc. and especially in certain custom web services.
“He said it’s “the future of individual media in the age of the individual… a future when individuals become brands.”
That’s pretty much how it’s always been for artists anyway, at least in the last 500-1000 years: http://theaesth...keting-for-art/
Wait. So you think Twitter and YouTube really do generate significant revenue? Really? And you think that when all the credit is gone, people are still going to be putting money into companies that have very little chance of generating revenue? Really?
Your sarcasm is not founded.
(Since he’s talking about business, I think it’s safe to say he’s referring to the myriad of social-media startups that generate no revenue.)
Youtube lost $500 million last year according to an article on techcrunch.
“Web 2.0 is fucked! Web 2.0 doesn’t work – it doesn’t generate revenue.”
Captain obvious to the rescue. I cited this at the beginning of the web 2.0 trend back in 2005.
I am the winner, not you. Hind sight is 20/20. I did not use hind site but rather logic to come to my conclusion. I ran a large social network in 2005 that scared even MySpace.
I saw the web stats, and click through rate, and I knew then, at only 20k users that this was going to be the end of internet profitability.
I am going to correct this trend. Me, and 3 other people are going to correct this trend.
The web needs bouncers. Bouncers stop freeloaders from getting into a bar without paying. Bouncers throw people out when they are causing something that will lead the business owner to lose money or interest.
Digital bouncers will save the web. Bouncers with enough deep and thorough programming knowledge.
Why is this inequality news to anyone? Power law distributions can be seen in so many systems that it seems only natural to expect it in environments like Twitter.
Not everyone can be super-connected and the vast majority aren’t. There is a natural order to this.
Surely Twitter is the cherry on the cake not the nail in the coffin. Things don’t get any more web 2.0 than Twitter.
I’m not sure I agree, only because Web 2.0, in my view is not well defined, or at least, doesn’t have a widely accepted definition. I think we can all agree that a large component of Web 2.0 is the social aspect. The personal *space* pages started it out, and also were the incubators of UGC activities. That’s been going on for some years now. Now it seems that Twitter is the most interesting implementation of the social web idea. As far as YouTube goes, I personally never thought it would be a huge money maker and (humbly) always questioned the business model. Unless and until they figure out a way to monetize it with advertising (tough challenge), subscriptions (yeah right), sponsorships (perhaps), or donations (huh?) – good luck. Perhaps some strange combination of those might make it happen, but I’m skeptical.
IMO, to say Web 2.0 is fucked is a sloppy generalization. Especially when he is talking about the social aspect of Web 2.0 being emphasized and better utilized with the next-gen web. I wholeheartedly agree with that. In my view, the next-gen web is simply going to do 2 things: 1) understand how to monetize the social web among its many implementations and business models, and 2) move off the PC/notebook onto specialized devices. Number 2 will also see new opportunities for both business ideas and technology. Obviously both 1 and 2 are currently happening, and I think we’ll see an acceleration of those phenomena.
So in a large sense, if my suppositions are relatively sane, it would seem that Twitter is bridging the Web 2.0 space and the next-gen space. I’m just not sure that existing businesses will be able to adapt so quickly, which will encumber and impede the progression of the next-gen model.
What? No room at TechCrunch for an opposing view? Could that have to do with your point that popularity is the goal and not the product?
Twitter is certainly interesting, and I don’t care if they monetize it. I care that under 30’s are claiming it’s the new whole-grain bread.
If Twitter worked to monetize my own online stores, attained real sales and increasing sales, then maybe I can monetize the hourly rate is costs me to tweet for hours every day with nothing to show for it. Ditto with all the other social networking trends.
I don’t think it’s so odd to question the value of social networking and other time-eaters which have turned out to be——just what you say, a POPULARITY CONTEST.
It might work to gain you more followers so that they can read about how TechCrunch keeps tooting its own horn.
Andrew’s opinion of Web2.0 is superficial at best. Leave it up to captain obvious to remind us of the status quo.
It wasn’t too long ago when ecommerce first came around, people were jumping on the band-wagon, but were unable to turn a profit. At the time, we could identify every significant benefit of this paradigm shift on paper i.e. better consumer reach, reducing brick-and-mortar costs, internationalization, but still early adopters could not make it work. Then finally shipping became cheaper, online payment matured and became more socially acceptable, which enabled ecommerce as a feasible retail platform. However, until that happened ecommerce was also considered “f*cked”.
Andrew has recognized the social significance of twitter, and impact on brand marketing strategies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was eating his words next year when a stroke of genius happens and joe the plumber comes up with a sustainable revenue model for all this UGC.
This video is a series of assertions without any supporting argumentation; I sure hope this isn’t an indication of what’s next from that man.
What this guy fails to realize is that the vast majority (let’s say at least 99.9%) of people who have audiences on the internet (Twitter included) built them through traditional media outlets. Almost no one has become famous through MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, etc., and those that have achieved fame have proven to be generally talentless and their exposure short lived.
The people with an internet audience are the people who came to the internet with an audience already in place. Sure, they may have increased their base online, but without the seed of traditional, corporate, and big budget media, they would have floundered like all the other anonymous shlubs online.
Bottom line, the internet can be used to further separate oneself from the pack, but it can’t be used to create the initial separation and can’t be used to cause true market disruption.
If that is the absolute unequivocal truth, how do you explain Arrington ?
Actually Andrew Keen is fucked cuz no one is going to buy his next book http://www.boin...licly-humi.html
Best post on this thread yet!
Finally, there is someone saying aloud what I have been writing on – Web 2.0 Bubble. Web 2.0 startups basically have no or unsustainable business models.
WHY do they all have to MAKE MONEY?
Is this a law?
If his only focus is the individual then he’s missing the point, quite frankly. The perception of individual fame, notoriety or success is surely there, but social media and sites like Twitter and Meetup are connecting tribes and groups in ways humans haven’t experienced in quite some time.
keen is an attention-who*e plain and simple, i saw this guy at a conference in LA a few years ago and all he was referencing were particular passages inhis book and the need for the audience to go buy it. he will take this stance as long as it sells a few more books for him, he doesnt have much in the ways of substance, he’s old school and not worth writing about……
Bravo AJ; you do have a way with works. Love your Brit Wit, the Great Seduction and your take on the risk of more of the same, i.e., hierarchical societies.
I see similar promise in Twitter. Here is re-post to @hardaway on Twitter potential: “…certainly levels playing field; moats, silos & “on message budgets”; must compete on relevance v. institutional scale @ajkeen”
How is it supportable that “new media will be much less egalitarian than mass media” (at 1:37). Shouldn’t talented individuals hold power? Was it better held by corporate media?
It’s not clear why Keen is so bothered, when he can simply opt out of – and not participate in new media and just stick with the old.
As I state in the Metaverse Manifesto, this revolution leaves pre-existing realities intact. Old media, big media corporations, reruns etc. will always be there in some form for people that want them. It’s good to see the vigorous debate.
Twitter really sucks.
I don’t know why Techcrunch create such a big deal about it.
If Mike owns shares then i’s highly unethical journalism
What’s with all the asterisks, please? I thought this was supposed to be a grown-up blog.
Yes, please spell the naughty words in full.
>>He thinks Twitter is “Feudal” in that those with large numbers of followers behave like barons of old, picking those they favour at random…
Instead, the most successful barons/tribe leaders will be those who create feedback-driven, reputation-building venues for followers to assist others in the tribe — and/or to assist local and global good causes aligned with the values the leaders seek to spread.
Twitter-based near-currencies such as Twollars — in tandom with initiatives such as Tweetbrain.com, Swarmforce.com, and DebateGraph.org — are offering tools for the Twitter barrons to create ecosystems that enable followers to (non-randomly) earn their way to high visibility.
Mark Frazier
Openworld
@openworld (Twitter)
Internet currencies are not any solution to anything either.
Buying credibility on a site is evil.