It's time to pay attention to your attention
Jim Cuene points out that: "Your Attention is What You do On the Web," and that, he concludes is something valuable that you own and something for which you should be compensated.

In his post, he explains it like this:

"Think about, for example, the OPML file that contains your RSS feeds. Or, the list of tags you've generated at Delicio.us or Flickr. Or, your My.Yahoo page preferences. Or, your Google search history. Or, the emails you get in Gmail. Or, the list of recent MS Office documents you created on your desktop. You're leaving tracks all over the internet, sometimes intentionally (the sites you comment on, the ratings you give in Amazon), sometimes unintentionally (the headlines you click on CNN.com). All those tracks are evidence of your interests, what you are paying attention to."

This whole subject of the value of your attention has been under discussion for about the last year and is likely to be so for the coming year. However the thing that strikes me as interesting or significant is the thought that it is YOUR attention and that you should be bartering it rather than giving it away, as most of us are now.

Here are a couple of other links that relate to the subject that I found interesting:

AttentionTrust.org Explained Better

From that link comes this quote:

"As we use the web, we reveal lots of information about ourselves by what we pay attention to. Imagine if all of that information could be stored in a nice neat little xml file. And when we travel around the web, we can optionally share it with websites or other people. We can make them pay for it, lease it, scream for it "show me the money", barter for it, whatever."

And from August 20, 2004 here's a Podcast on the subject by the Gilmor Gang that is a little over one hour in length.

I find all of this interesting stuff and an example of how the rules are changing because of our increasingly connected and documented life in this new century.
- posted by Perry @ 10:06 AM