You’ve Just Been Dissed by Business 2.0 …Oh Snap!
This month Business 2.0 published their list of “The 50 Who Matter Now”. The list includes up-and-coming entrepreneurs, some usual suspects like the guys from Digg, Facebook, Second Life, and of course the media’s latest darling…You. Me? Yes, You!
Have You had your fifteen minutes of fame? According to Business 2.0, you have. The publication is waving its finger at us and our YouTube loving ways. It was only last year that, according to Business 2.0 and Time Magazine, we were No. 1. We are now swimming in the bottom five. How the mighty have fallen.
This is what the magazine had to say:
“You: Web-enabled mass participation
Rank: 45
Why you matter: Can we be blunt? You had a disappointing year. It began with great promise, when this magazine placed You in the No.1 slot on the 2006 edition of this list. “You’ve become an integral part of the action as a member of the aggregated, interactive, self-organizing, auto-entertaining audience,” we said, and we really meant it! A few months later, our corporate cousins at Time concurred and named You the 2006 Person of the Year.
Then You got lazy. All those YouTube videos of cats dancing, playing the piano, and drunkenly running into walls? So derivative. Then there was all the fawning over Snakes on a Plane. What was up with that? And don’t even get us started on Sanjaya. Look, we still think You have lots of potential. But if You’re really going to change the media landscape, it’s time to step up Your game.”
Do you think You/We are changing the media landscape for the better or are we democratizing content to the point of buffoonery?
Comments
Greg Albers Jul 5, 2007 at 10:10 am
Business 2.0 might have it right, You has had a rather flat year. I’m just betting it’s a pause on the way to something better.
It’s always seemed to me that You’s biggest potential lies in its individual voices finding talented, like-minded collaborators to develop projects together. As long as the right few people can find one another and believe enough in the project to work on it at a professional level, it’s only a matter of time before You + You + You are putting together content to rival anything the majors are doing now. So, where once we had drunk, piano playing, dancing cats, I suppose next we’ll have drunk, piano playing, dancing cats beautifully edited and with an award-wining original score.
June Jul 6, 2007 at 9:56 am
Now I am waiting for the day that YouTube shorts is its own category in the Oscars.