Is Andrew Keen going soft? The writer’s The Cult Of The Amateur book attracted much derision from Web 2.0 fanatics for its admonishment of their always-on, open-access, user-generated visions of utopia. But, writing in this morning’s Independent, Keen has had a change of heart on at least one of the paradigms once in his crosshair…
On web TV streamer Justin.tv: “Just another ephemeral web 2.0 thing, I concluded. After all, how many kids would be shameless enough to broadcast their entire lives to a voyeuristic world? I was totally wrong. The venture capital-backed Justin.tv is now a significant commercial success. Since March of last year, it has added 650,000 new users and has racked up 62 years of video on the site. What Justin.tv proves is that the juvenile self-broadcast is quickly becoming the dominant artform for today’s YouTube generation.”
And Keen notes a YouTube channel made by a 14-year-old Nebraskan “receives more views than anything distributed by mainstream media organisations like CBS (NYSE: CBS) or the BBC; kids like Lucas Cruikshank and Justin Kan are now controlling the media business.” We all still have a little room left to be taken by surprise.