The Attention Economy: An Overview - 0 views
www.readwriteweb.com/...attention_economy_overview.php
attention economy web2.0 information economics media social attentioneconomy
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Because of this information explosion, we no longer read - we skim. The news that used to last a day now lasts just a few hours, simply because we need to pay attention to the new news. So it is becoming increasingly difficult to juggle all the news sources and keep on top of things. Which brings us to the law of information, stated first by Herbert Simon: the rapid growth of information
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It is also a big problem for news sites, blogs, search engines and online retailers. Our scarcity of attention hurts their economics.
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The idea behind the Attention Economy is to create a marketplace where consumers are happy, because if they are shown relevant information
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For example news feeds illustrate the point well, since they ask for consumers attention in exchange for the opportunity to show him/her advertising. The Search engines are similar in that respect, because they show ads in exchange for helping users find answers online.
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So the question is: how do you show the user relevant content? This is a complex problem that can be partially addressed by recommendation engines.
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The challenge is not just to protect consumers information, the challenge is to put the user in control of her information.
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AttentionTrust succeeded in defining a simple, elegant, yet encompassing set of principles that define the rules of the game, by outlining the basic consumer rights in the AttentionEconomy: Property: You own your attention and can store it wherever you wish. You have CONTROL. Mobility: You can securely move your attention wherever you want, whenever you want to. You have the ability to TRANSFER your attention. Economy: You can pay attention to whomever you wish and receive value in return. Your attention has WORTH. Transparency: You can see exactly how your attention is being used.
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So these seemingly simple rules ensure that participants transact fairly and that businesses do not monopolize users information
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Ideally, a body of standards and protocols should be the technological foundation of the Attention Economy. Since these are early days of the conversation about attention, such standards do not yet exist. Here is an outline of what the Attention Architecture will look like (there is a detailed post on the topic from last year on my personal blog):
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So from a technical point of view, the key to facilitating the attention marketplace is in decoupling of attention capturing, attention storage and attention recording services.
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Silos: User information needs to be freed from proprietary silos Round Table: The industry needs to create a round table, to enable organizations to govern both the business and technical aspects of the attention economy (think Java Community Process). Education: People need to be educated about the value of their attention and the principles of attention economy. Avoiding privacy concerns will not work, instead they need to be tackled head on.