Tag: web 2.0
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Google’s doing to Twitterbook what it’s doing to copyright
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Google has two prongs to its long-term strategy, but Wave, the “digital dashboard” it unveiled last week, casts light on a third. One strategy is to drive down the value of copyright material on the internet to zero. Google has a ruthless and calculating view of the real value of stuff. It reasons that if…
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Web 2.0 and feedback loops: a conversation with James Harkin
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Don’t judge a book by the title. Especially if the title is something like Cyburbia. James Harkin, who worked with Adam Curtis on The Trap, has produced the first proper full-length critique of Web 2.0 – tracing the daftness back to the cybernetics pioneers of the 1940s. It’s odd that something with so much hype…
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Twitter’s Jam Festival
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Writing about Twitter is the journalistic equivalent of eating the fluff from your navel. The posh papers love it. Menopausal middle-aged hacks love it. The BBC is obsessed with it. Instead of telling us something we didn’t know before, Twitter makes churnalism so easy, it practically automates the entire job. The rest of the world,…
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Google cranks up the Consensus Engine
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It’s a historic statement – and nobody has yet grasped its significance. Not so very long ago, Google disclaimed responsibility for its search results by explaining that these were chosen by a computer algorithm. The disclaimer lives on…
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Anderson downgrades Long Tail to Chocolate Teapot status
by
Andrew Orlowski
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“The end came quickly,” as authors of morbid weepies like to say. On Monday WiReD magazine editor Chris Anderson effectively admitted game over for his “Long Tail”, the idea he’s been dragging so lucratively around the conference circuit for the past four years. In as many words, he downgraded it from “the future of business”…
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The BBC’s Tragic Twitterers
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Here’s a conundrum. Top Media People want to come out of the shadows and get “closer to their listeners” – it’s what the Web 2.0 people urge them to do. BBC people in particular are obsessed with being seen to be bossy or “out-of-touch” – especially since three out of four license payers have a…