Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

Tag: web 2.0

  • Google’s doing to Twitterbook what it’s doing to copyright

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    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 all we do on the net is talk to each other, then it’s merely fulfilling the role of a switchboard operator at a Soviet-era state … Read More

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    Web 2.0 and feedback loops: a conversation with James Harkin

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Weiner

    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 as Web 2.0 has received so little intelligent criticism. Half of Nick Carr’s The Big Switch, looked at the social and psychological implications, … Read More

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  • Twitter’s Jam Festival

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    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, however, completely ignores it. But with the journalists’ attention fixed firmly on each others’ navels, they don’t seem to realise what a fringe activity Twitter … Read More

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  • Google cranks up the Consensus Engine

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Image from Google's 2006 analyst presentation

    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 at Google News, where we are assured that:

    The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.

    A … Read More

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  • Anderson downgrades Long Tail to Chocolate Teapot status

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Long Tail

    “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” to something that’s, er, not very helpful for your business at all.

    “I’ll end by conceding a point: It’s hard to make money in the … Read More

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  • The BBC’s Tragic Twitterers

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Rory Celland Jones

    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 gripe with the corporation.

    But the more of themselves media people reveal, the more the public sees them as clueless, self-referential and narcissistic bunch so … Read More

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