Digital Media
Web 2.0

Andrew Keen is the author of “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture”, a highly controversial publication that questions and challenges the supposed benefits of Web 2.0.

In the book Andrew Keen argues that “web 2.0 is killing our culture, assaulting our economy and destroying time-honoured codes of conduct.” He goes on to say that the supposed “democratisation” of the web has been a sham. “Despite its lofty idealisation it’s undermining truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling expertise, experience and talent. Instead of a dictatorship of experts, we’ll have a dictatorship of idiots.”

Andrew Keen is a leading visionary in the audio business with almost ten years of experience as an entrepreneur, salesman and writer in the industry. Having single-handedly founded Audiocafe in 1997, Keen has driven the development of the site’s content and business development. His model of integrating commerce, community and content is now acknowledged as the most viable business model for building a successful Internet business model.

From its origins in 1997, Andrew Keen has built an Internet site well branded and respected throughout the audio, music and Internet industries. As the Founder of the company, Keen has personally recruited the entire management team at Audiocafe — including Eric Hall (President), the founding COO/CFO at Yahoo! and an executive at a number of other successful Internet start-ups, and James S. Thompson (COO), an experienced senior executive and veteran entrepreneur with five start-ups under his belt.

Andrew Keen is “an entrepreneur, salesman and writer in the industry” who apparently created the “model of integrating commerce, community and content [which] is now acknowledged as the most viable business model for building a successful Internet business model.” The audacity of the claim isn’t the only thing that has me rolling; “commerce, community and content” are all foundational elements of the Web 2.0 that he criticises.