Are today’s "gifted amateurs" on the Internet killing popular media?

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Andrew Keen’s new book, “The Cult of the Amateur – how today’s Internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy”, examines this very issue.

I’m not entirely convinced that Keen is convinced by his own argument. However, The book is designed to be “biased” and finally sparks a debate about the case against amateur content and its proliferation  through Web 2.0 technologies.

I do agree with Keen in some respects, in that it is becoming too easy to manipulate Google’s search engine’s results with Google Adwords and then using the results of popular searched words, as keywords on your site. The polite term for this is “Search Engine Optimisation”. I see it more as Search Engine Hacking. Search engines, such as Google are increasing their own usage with tactics such as Google Adwords.

However to the original point, are amateurs really killing the Internet and popular media?

Have a look at the video below, where Keen discusses his book at part of the Authors@Google series. I’m off into the  garden to the read the book!

Andrew Keen’s blog