It all crystalized earlier this week when Ethan Stock, CEO of Zvents showed me his new Web-based business. See, I’m pretty slow. It took me four years to get blogging after Dave Winer first started his. It took me two more years to really get RSS’s relationship power. I still haven’t gotten OPML totally (although, I’m working on a directory of my blogs that’ll be pretty cool, so I’m fairly far along getting that).
On Monday night Steve Gillmor explained what he meant by attention (he started AttentionTrust.org). See, I thought what he meant was that attention was all about gathering the clicking behavior of people like you in a central database. Imagine when you go to Bloglines. Thousands of people visit that every day. They all click on links. Bloglines tracks those clicks. I thought that was attention data that Gillmor was talking about.
I was wrong.
And it took me seeing Zvents (and hanging out later with the smart folks from the content and advertising industries) for me to get it.
So, let’s dive in. Zvents is an event page. You tell it that you want to see a football game this weekend. It gives you a result back. So far, pretty basic stuff. But, click on an event. See the Google Map? Forget that it’s Google for now. Let’s call that a Web Buzz Building Gadget.
Now, see the Google Ads over to the right? Let’s call that a Web Monetization Gadget.
So, here’s the new Silicon Valley business plan. You build a service. Add a Buzz Gadget (Google/MSN/Yahoo are working on more to come). Add a Monetization Gadget (Google calls that their Web Advertising Platform — MSN and Yahoo are working on their own). Mix and mash and we have a business. Guess what? This business will be very profitable. Why? You develop it cheaply and if you did your job right, a boatload of people come and visit your service, like it, keep coming back, and hopefully they click on the ads (the more they click on the ads, the more money you make).
Now, that sounds cool, right? But here’s where attention could come in.
What is Zvents capturing? Well, they know you like football. They know you probably are in San Francisco this weekend. And, if you click on one or two of the events, they know you’re interested in them. Now, what if you see an ad for a pair of Nikon binoculars. If you click on that, then Zvents would be able to capture that as well.
Now, what other kinds of things might football fans, who are interested in binoculars, who are in San Francisco, want to do this weekend? Hmmm, Amazon sure knows how to figure that kind of problem out, right? (Ever buy a Harry Potter book on Amazon? They suggest other books for you to buy based on past customer behavior!!!)
It goes further. Let’s say this is 2007. Let’s say that Google (or Yahoo or MSN) has a calendar “branding” gadget out. Let’s say they have a video “monetization” gadget out. Zvents could build the calendar “branding” gadget into their page. What would they get out of that? Lots of great PR, and a Google (or MSN or Yahoo) logo in everyone’s face. But, they would also know where you’d be this weekend. Why? Cause you would have added the 49ers football game to your calendar. So, they would know where you are gonna be on Sunday. And, that you just bought binoculars. Over time Google/MSN/Yahoo would be able to learn even more about you and bring you even more ads. How?
Well, let’s say you’re Starbucks. Let’s say you make a deal with Google to put Starbucks ads on Google Maps. Let’s say the ads say “$.50 off of your next latte if you give this code: XZP1.” So, you go into Starbucks and give them the code. They punch that into the register. It reports back to Starbucks headquarters that you bought a latte because of the Google ad. Then, they report back to Google that you bought something (Starbucks will get a discount on their ads for this kind of reporting).
Now, Google knows you like coffee too. Oh, what Google knows!
It’s all attention. So, now, what if Zvents and Google shared their attention with everyone through an API. Now, let’s say I start a new Web business. Let’s call it “Scoble’s tickets and travel.” You come to my site to book a trip to London, let’s say. Well, now, what do I know about you? I know you were in San Francisco, that you like coffee, that you just bought some binoculars, that you like football. So, now I can suggest hotels near Starbucks and I can suggest places where you’ll be able to use your binoculars (like, say, that big wheel that’s in the middle of London). Even the football angle might come in handy. Imagine I made a deal with the local soccer team. Wouldn’t it be useful to put on my page “49ers fans get $10 off European football tickets.”
But, it gets even better. Now that the system is capturing my attention, and sharing it, my Web Gadgets (both branding and advertising) get better over time. They start to thrill me at some point. And, when I go to a search engine, it can see ALL my attention data and start suggesting things it thinks I’d like (sorta like Amazon suggests things to me).
Now, imagine my blog hooked into this attention system. Wouldn’t I get better ads along the right? Damn straight you would. And, let’s say I had a weather gadget on the right. Wouldn’t that show you YOUR city? Yes.
Wouldn’t it be able to see changes in your behavior over time and bring you even cooler stuff? Let’s say this system watched you for three years and then you started searching on pregnancy. Or “best price on diapers.” Or buying books on Amazon with titles like “Parenting.” And, Flickr could report to the system that you wrote “our new baby.” Oh, and it could watch everything you type on your blog.
Couldn’t the system know that you are likely a new parent? Couldn’t it bring up new kinds of advertising targeted at a new parent?
When I ran a camera store we sold diapers in our store. Why? So that we could get new parents into the store. Turns out that new parents buy a TON of camera gear.
My mind is racing from what you could do with this kind of data. I’m sitting with Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords. I bet that even ActiveWords could make use of such attention data.
Now I’m starting to get scared by this kind of world.
scared is the wrong word. we have to accept the fact that advertising is evolving. no more do companies make an advertisement for everyone and hope a few people catch the bait.
now with ads targetted right at us we areseeing an evolution that pushes the edge of ecommerce society.
you think about this scoble: google base, now google knows what you buy! what items you look at, even the houses you like.
these are exciting times that in my mind will usher in extreme rebels. people who care about their privacy so much that they will firebomb the google offices.
i for one welcome the evolution of commerce, even if it means that skynet is becoming aware.
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scared is the wrong word. we have to accept the fact that advertising is evolving. no more do companies make an advertisement for everyone and hope a few people catch the bait.
now with ads targetted right at us we areseeing an evolution that pushes the edge of ecommerce society.
you think about this scoble: google base, now google knows what you buy! what items you look at, even the houses you like.
these are exciting times that in my mind will usher in extreme rebels. people who care about their privacy so much that they will firebomb the google offices.
i for one welcome the evolution of commerce, even if it means that skynet is becoming aware.
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Stefan: I’m scared that Microsoft is gonna be locked out of such a world. 🙂
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Stefan: I’m scared that Microsoft is gonna be locked out of such a world. 🙂
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Ha, ha…Scoble, you must have just read The Attention Economy by John Beck. Came out four years ago. Welcome to the attention party! 🙂
adam
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Ha, ha…Scoble, you must have just read The Attention Economy by John Beck. Came out four years ago. Welcome to the attention party! 🙂
adam
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Thankfully, the “evolution” is dependent on our compliance.
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Thankfully, the “evolution” is dependent on our compliance.
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Nah, I’ve never read that book. I’ll have to now, though!
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Nah, I’ve never read that book. I’ll have to now, though!
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This is all going to end badly. This is the dotcom crash 2.0. When a company like upcoming gets bought out (and gets mentioned on this blog), you know there are issues.
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This is all going to end badly. This is the dotcom crash 2.0. When a company like upcoming gets bought out (and gets mentioned on this blog), you know there are issues.
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I think there are two keys to making the system you describe above work:
1) The monetization side- which is self-evident
2) The correlation side- which is a much harder problem.
The correlation system is something that many ecommerce sites have tried to develop – and failed at. Amazon and Google are the only two that leap to mind as having correlation systems that actually work. My point here is that unless Amazon puts an API on their correlation system, it’s unlikely that any minor-league service will be able to get their hands on a wide-enough dataset to be useful.
So I wonder if that’s what Google Base is actually about?
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I think there are two keys to making the system you describe above work:
1) The monetization side- which is self-evident
2) The correlation side- which is a much harder problem.
The correlation system is something that many ecommerce sites have tried to develop – and failed at. Amazon and Google are the only two that leap to mind as having correlation systems that actually work. My point here is that unless Amazon puts an API on their correlation system, it’s unlikely that any minor-league service will be able to get their hands on a wide-enough dataset to be useful.
So I wonder if that’s what Google Base is actually about?
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This does seems like the evolution of something like DoubleClick to more concrete user-action tracking. DoubleClick has been able to track all the sites (and sub-pages) that a user visits where they’ve had advertising. Of course the 3rd-party cookies supression defaults in IE 6 stop this kind of data collection to an extent.
Certainly privacy soup.
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This does seems like the evolution of something like DoubleClick to more concrete user-action tracking. DoubleClick has been able to track all the sites (and sub-pages) that a user visits where they’ve had advertising. Of course the 3rd-party cookies supression defaults in IE 6 stop this kind of data collection to an extent.
Certainly privacy soup.
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Great to see this topic discussed here. Just to muddy the water even further, here are a few questions that need to be asked:
(1) Who owns the information about what you’re paying attention to?
(2) Where is this information stored?
(3) How do you control how this information is shared between services (“gadgets”)?
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Great to see this topic discussed here. Just to muddy the water even further, here are a few questions that need to be asked:
(1) Who owns the information about what you’re paying attention to?
(2) Where is this information stored?
(3) How do you control how this information is shared between services (“gadgets”)?
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Wow – what a great discussion – How about John Hagel who wrote about an Infomediary in his book “Networth”. I read this book in 1998 (approx.) and it changed my life. I’m picking up the Attention Economy this afternoon…. I call this social activity “Consumer Managed Marketing” where consumer gain control over their data (consumer profiles) and leverage it against the merchant community and their current (pathetic) marketing and advertising. Advertising and marketing is changing dramatically, and most (if not all) marketing/pr/advertising agencies just don’t get it.
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Wow – what a great discussion – How about John Hagel who wrote about an Infomediary in his book “Networth”. I read this book in 1998 (approx.) and it changed my life. I’m picking up the Attention Economy this afternoon…. I call this social activity “Consumer Managed Marketing” where consumer gain control over their data (consumer profiles) and leverage it against the merchant community and their current (pathetic) marketing and advertising. Advertising and marketing is changing dramatically, and most (if not all) marketing/pr/advertising agencies just don’t get it.
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Well, I think NewsGator is an interesting model. At first it was just an Outlook aggregator. Then it was an Outlook aggregator and a Media Center aggregator, but they were info silos. Then they added a Web service that synchronized everything. Then they bought FeedDemon (your company). Then they bought NetNewsWire.
Today we have advertising components that gather some of this data. The search engine gathers some too. Then Maps gather data too. All of these are siloed.
How do you control how this information is shared? That’s up to the developers to design a common API that we all can share data through. It’ll be federated between the various services. Amazon, I’m sure, could make a system that shares data with Google and vice versa.
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Well, I think NewsGator is an interesting model. At first it was just an Outlook aggregator. Then it was an Outlook aggregator and a Media Center aggregator, but they were info silos. Then they added a Web service that synchronized everything. Then they bought FeedDemon (your company). Then they bought NetNewsWire.
Today we have advertising components that gather some of this data. The search engine gathers some too. Then Maps gather data too. All of these are siloed.
How do you control how this information is shared? That’s up to the developers to design a common API that we all can share data through. It’ll be federated between the various services. Amazon, I’m sure, could make a system that shares data with Google and vice versa.
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Scoble: What makes you think that Amazon, Google, and Mocrosoft are so willing to share all this data amongst each other?
Don’t get me wrong I would love to see it happen, but you are being a bit too optimistic.
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Scoble: What makes you think that Amazon, Google, and Mocrosoft are so willing to share all this data amongst each other?
Don’t get me wrong I would love to see it happen, but you are being a bit too optimistic.
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Likewise, I think MS is an interesting model 🙂 The “RSS data store” in Vista provides a way for MS to figure out what you’re paying attention to, and I have to wonder how much of this attention data will be shared outside of MS.
Having this information stored at the OS level, though, does provide opportunties for deciding how it may be shared. IE7, for example, could alert the user to the fact that an outside service wishes access to their attention store, and enable the user to grant or deny that access.
Doing this in a way that makes sense to non-techies is tricky, but IMO, MS has done a decent job in the past simplifying highly technical decisions for end users.
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Likewise, I think MS is an interesting model 🙂 The “RSS data store” in Vista provides a way for MS to figure out what you’re paying attention to, and I have to wonder how much of this attention data will be shared outside of MS.
Having this information stored at the OS level, though, does provide opportunties for deciding how it may be shared. IE7, for example, could alert the user to the fact that an outside service wishes access to their attention store, and enable the user to grant or deny that access.
Doing this in a way that makes sense to non-techies is tricky, but IMO, MS has done a decent job in the past simplifying highly technical decisions for end users.
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Nick I have some UI ideas you might like for FD, I know RC2 is due sometime in the first week of November, but I am already thinking about 1.7!
I’m starting to seem like a stalker, but it’s only because I want to see a solid product turn into something more concrete!
Just email me, DevilsRejection at gmail.com
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Nick I have some UI ideas you might like for FD, I know RC2 is due sometime in the first week of November, but I am already thinking about 1.7!
I’m starting to seem like a stalker, but it’s only because I want to see a solid product turn into something more concrete!
Just email me, DevilsRejection at gmail.com
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Stefan, I think you’ve hit on a key point here: there *isn’t* much incentive for competing services to share your attention data. That’s why it needs to be under your control – so *you* can choose which services can access it, regardless of whether they want to play nice with each other.
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Stefan, I think you’ve hit on a key point here: there *isn’t* much incentive for competing services to share your attention data. That’s why it needs to be under your control – so *you* can choose which services can access it, regardless of whether they want to play nice with each other.
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Nick, but then it harms the potential for a direct advertising model.
Take this example: I go to school and find a girl, we go out for 3 months, then I cheat on her for some strange reason. She then spreads rumors about me saying I beat her. Now no girl in that particular school will go out with me.
Now I can go to a new school, no one knows me, and start over fresh.
How does that relate to attention data? Well let’s say that the school where all this happened was Google. The moment I go to a service/site that uses MSN I now have to start over. MSN doesn’t know anything about me, the advertising is very general, unlike the years worth of content collected with Google, it just turns me off from wanting to use MSN.
Now if this data was shared then I can have the same experience no matter where I am! In the end it’s all about profit and it’s the advertisers who get the money. Google, MSN, Amazon, they’re just the middle men between us the consumer and the advertising companies.
All of them should work together to benefit both us the consumer, and the advertisers.
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Nick, but then it harms the potential for a direct advertising model.
Take this example: I go to school and find a girl, we go out for 3 months, then I cheat on her for some strange reason. She then spreads rumors about me saying I beat her. Now no girl in that particular school will go out with me.
Now I can go to a new school, no one knows me, and start over fresh.
How does that relate to attention data? Well let’s say that the school where all this happened was Google. The moment I go to a service/site that uses MSN I now have to start over. MSN doesn’t know anything about me, the advertising is very general, unlike the years worth of content collected with Google, it just turns me off from wanting to use MSN.
Now if this data was shared then I can have the same experience no matter where I am! In the end it’s all about profit and it’s the advertisers who get the money. Google, MSN, Amazon, they’re just the middle men between us the consumer and the advertising companies.
All of them should work together to benefit both us the consumer, and the advertisers.
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Stefan –
Hate to burst your bubble, but telling a company like MSFT to “work together with others to benefit the consumer” is like telling a termite to take up ballet. MSFT’s entire ETHOS is to get people to STOP working with others and ONLY work with them. That’s the culture they’ve built.
But now the game has changed and all the hard charging type A brains at MSFT have to suddenly retool their minds and their attitudes to “share” better. But that is very very hard. Imagine someone like Ballmer “sharing”? He of the throwing of chairs?
Not likely.
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Stefan –
Hate to burst your bubble, but telling a company like MSFT to “work together with others to benefit the consumer” is like telling a termite to take up ballet. MSFT’s entire ETHOS is to get people to STOP working with others and ONLY work with them. That’s the culture they’ve built.
But now the game has changed and all the hard charging type A brains at MSFT have to suddenly retool their minds and their attitudes to “share” better. But that is very very hard. Imagine someone like Ballmer “sharing”? He of the throwing of chairs?
Not likely.
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Not to sound like a brown noser, but when I think in our lifetime we will see Scoble as the CEO of Microsoft since he is on top of the industry trends better than anyone probably working there.
I hope that Steve Ballmer is atleast reading this blog, everyday, to see what an employer passionate about the future, who mingles with the competitors, and the latest start-ups, has to say.
The net used to be boring, now it looks like the next few years will yeild expotential growth in more service oriented content. Interesting times lie ahead indeed.
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Not to sound like a brown noser, but when I think in our lifetime we will see Scoble as the CEO of Microsoft since he is on top of the industry trends better than anyone probably working there.
I hope that Steve Ballmer is atleast reading this blog, everyday, to see what an employer passionate about the future, who mingles with the competitors, and the latest start-ups, has to say.
The net used to be boring, now it looks like the next few years will yeild expotential growth in more service oriented content. Interesting times lie ahead indeed.
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Nick Bradbury: you ask excellent questions and there are precidents for this in the direct marketing world vIa Loyalty Marketing. In Canada the FOIP, or Freedom of Information and Privacy law basically states that businesses are rersponsible for protecting conumer/customer data and disclosure of how you will use the information and being able to ‘opt out’ is manditory.
With the hubbub that Google about privacy over Gmail a third party gathering information from their own customers is one thing, connecting the dots and sharing that information with a another party… I think that would cross the line and be a violation of one’s privacy… unless one were to ‘opt in’.
I have no problem with Airmiles tracking my purchases and then sending me a printed flyer with offers from other Airmiles merchants with my Airmiles statement. If they were to target me based off past purchasing patterns that is where I would draw the line.
Scobel: the light bulb went on for you and you chose to look at the commerce application and sharing of information between companies. I do not care whether it is tracked by Google or Airmiles, it makes no difference sharing my personal information and purchasing trends or patterns is nobodies damn business. Just because something is possible does not mean it should be done or is a good business practice.
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Nick Bradbury: you ask excellent questions and there are precidents for this in the direct marketing world vIa Loyalty Marketing. In Canada the FOIP, or Freedom of Information and Privacy law basically states that businesses are rersponsible for protecting conumer/customer data and disclosure of how you will use the information and being able to ‘opt out’ is manditory.
With the hubbub that Google about privacy over Gmail a third party gathering information from their own customers is one thing, connecting the dots and sharing that information with a another party… I think that would cross the line and be a violation of one’s privacy… unless one were to ‘opt in’.
I have no problem with Airmiles tracking my purchases and then sending me a printed flyer with offers from other Airmiles merchants with my Airmiles statement. If they were to target me based off past purchasing patterns that is where I would draw the line.
Scobel: the light bulb went on for you and you chose to look at the commerce application and sharing of information between companies. I do not care whether it is tracked by Google or Airmiles, it makes no difference sharing my personal information and purchasing trends or patterns is nobodies damn business. Just because something is possible does not mean it should be done or is a good business practice.
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Attention? A lot of people would say it looks more like an invasion of privacy when everything you do is tracked across multiple sites and services in order to shove ads in your face. Woohoo! More ads in my face! Bring it!
If “attention” in the way that you’re using it is to ever succeed, the most important thing that will have to happen is that we get past advertising, period. Laugh if you want to, but a post-advertising world would be one where service replaces advertising. Don’t tell me you want to do something for me… do something for me that’s so great I’m going to communicate and spread it throughout my social network. Trust and reputation are everything.
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Attention? A lot of people would say it looks more like an invasion of privacy when everything you do is tracked across multiple sites and services in order to shove ads in your face. Woohoo! More ads in my face! Bring it!
If “attention” in the way that you’re using it is to ever succeed, the most important thing that will have to happen is that we get past advertising, period. Laugh if you want to, but a post-advertising world would be one where service replaces advertising. Don’t tell me you want to do something for me… do something for me that’s so great I’m going to communicate and spread it throughout my social network. Trust and reputation are everything.
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To ameliorate big brother concerns we should all be able to access our databases. Wether they are stored by Amazon/Google/MSN etc and also have the right to edit or delete them.
A quick question – What is the emotion felt by you people when someone unknown to you greets you by your name? I’m thinking of when you are paying by VISA etc and they read the card and say thank you Mr X, personally I hate it!
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To ameliorate big brother concerns we should all be able to access our databases. Wether they are stored by Amazon/Google/MSN etc and also have the right to edit or delete them.
A quick question – What is the emotion felt by you people when someone unknown to you greets you by your name? I’m thinking of when you are paying by VISA etc and they read the card and say thank you Mr X, personally I hate it!
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Just to echo Michael’s comment, I believe very strongly that treating ‘attention’ as a means to deliver personally targeted ads is a mistake. If this was all attention was about, I’d have nothing to do with it.
I’m sure there are a number of companies drooling over the idea that they can find out so much about you, but how many of us would really give them the opportunity to do that? It’s unrealistic to believe that people would willingly permit services to know so much about them just to get better advertisements (and if they did so *un*willingly, the service would be facing some expensive lawsuits).
You might, however, want a specific service to track your attention so that it can make better recommendations to you (well-known examples of this are Amazon.com and Netflix). Or you might want a search engine to track your attention to provide personalized search. And you might want access to this attention data so that you can share it with other services.
And of course, RSS aggregators can use your attention data to help you to deal with information overload. If an aggregator knows which feeds you pay the most attention to, it can recommend other feeds to you. And if an aggregator knows which topics you pay the most attention to, it can locate related posts outside of your subscriptions which deal with the same topic.
Just to provide a concrete example of a simple use of attention, very soon FeedDemon will enable you to generate an OPML export of the feeds you pay the most attention to. You can then share this OPML with another service, or even expose it on your web site so others can subscribe to the feeds you read the most.
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Just to echo Michael’s comment, I believe very strongly that treating ‘attention’ as a means to deliver personally targeted ads is a mistake. If this was all attention was about, I’d have nothing to do with it.
I’m sure there are a number of companies drooling over the idea that they can find out so much about you, but how many of us would really give them the opportunity to do that? It’s unrealistic to believe that people would willingly permit services to know so much about them just to get better advertisements (and if they did so *un*willingly, the service would be facing some expensive lawsuits).
You might, however, want a specific service to track your attention so that it can make better recommendations to you (well-known examples of this are Amazon.com and Netflix). Or you might want a search engine to track your attention to provide personalized search. And you might want access to this attention data so that you can share it with other services.
And of course, RSS aggregators can use your attention data to help you to deal with information overload. If an aggregator knows which feeds you pay the most attention to, it can recommend other feeds to you. And if an aggregator knows which topics you pay the most attention to, it can locate related posts outside of your subscriptions which deal with the same topic.
Just to provide a concrete example of a simple use of attention, very soon FeedDemon will enable you to generate an OPML export of the feeds you pay the most attention to. You can then share this OPML with another service, or even expose it on your web site so others can subscribe to the feeds you read the most.
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The important thing about harvesting attention data is who owns it. Companies can’t own my clickstream, since my choices and preferences are part of my identity. The user needs to own his attention data, not the service provider. My take:
http://mashable.com/2005/10/28/wisdom-of-crowds-as-a-service/
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The important thing about harvesting attention data is who owns it. Companies can’t own my clickstream, since my choices and preferences are part of my identity. The user needs to own his attention data, not the service provider. My take:
http://mashable.com/2005/10/28/wisdom-of-crowds-as-a-service/
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Amazing insight Scob. Great opportunity abound…. Comments here on this thread add great value to the topic. Data is the key to success… that is using data right…for users..
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Amazing insight Scob. Great opportunity abound…. Comments here on this thread add great value to the topic. Data is the key to success… that is using data right…for users..
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Michael’s right. We are already way past the ad model. I and many others have learned to avoid ads like plague, I only click them to show support for couple sites, not to purchase what is behind the ad.
There are much better models to gain the attention of people like me, that is, to not show any ads at all, but to use the information to prioritize the information in queries I do such that it most likely brings what I am looking for, reducing the time wasted searching for a product and displaying related items Amazon style.
When I am in shopping mood I actually go to one of two places, a shop I know with huge catalogue or a price comparison site. There were recently some study showing people increasingly become more “immune” to ads. My self study shows I am totally immune to web/tv/radio ads, but very (a surprise to me even!) receiving of personally conveyed ads. Before studying this I thought that I weren’t making purchase decisions based on mouth to mouth recommendations, since those over half of the time aren’t based on proper research and facts. I am now trying to be more careful about listening to direct recommendations now that I know that I tend to purchase very expensive stuff just based on that without further research.
In web the best model is to differentiate query contexts. Make people know and go a shopping search engine that truly gives what people want, not what companies pay the search company push. Example: Imagine if Google was split to Shoople, Serple (services) and so on, such that they were exclusive of each other – OR that Google could know what you really want. That would be so awesome. Googling would bring anything BUT shops and services, since those have dedicated search contexts. Less time spent on pages trying to game Google and more time spent on reading blog recommendations for example and then using dedicated service/product searches to actually find things.
The current model is that went I have shopping mood I go to just few places which really know what I want and not try to push everything from everyone (Google search). This results my money going to just couple places instead of the one which might be providing either better service or value. Ad model thus doesn’t work.
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Michael’s right. We are already way past the ad model. I and many others have learned to avoid ads like plague, I only click them to show support for couple sites, not to purchase what is behind the ad.
There are much better models to gain the attention of people like me, that is, to not show any ads at all, but to use the information to prioritize the information in queries I do such that it most likely brings what I am looking for, reducing the time wasted searching for a product and displaying related items Amazon style.
When I am in shopping mood I actually go to one of two places, a shop I know with huge catalogue or a price comparison site. There were recently some study showing people increasingly become more “immune” to ads. My self study shows I am totally immune to web/tv/radio ads, but very (a surprise to me even!) receiving of personally conveyed ads. Before studying this I thought that I weren’t making purchase decisions based on mouth to mouth recommendations, since those over half of the time aren’t based on proper research and facts. I am now trying to be more careful about listening to direct recommendations now that I know that I tend to purchase very expensive stuff just based on that without further research.
In web the best model is to differentiate query contexts. Make people know and go a shopping search engine that truly gives what people want, not what companies pay the search company push. Example: Imagine if Google was split to Shoople, Serple (services) and so on, such that they were exclusive of each other – OR that Google could know what you really want. That would be so awesome. Googling would bring anything BUT shops and services, since those have dedicated search contexts. Less time spent on pages trying to game Google and more time spent on reading blog recommendations for example and then using dedicated service/product searches to actually find things.
The current model is that went I have shopping mood I go to just few places which really know what I want and not try to push everything from everyone (Google search). This results my money going to just couple places instead of the one which might be providing either better service or value. Ad model thus doesn’t work.
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Umm Hailstorm Part Duex.
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Umm Hailstorm Part Duex.
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Scoble sees the good side of a world where your attention is a commodity, but what about the bad side?
At what point does the commodization of attention become not a convenience but a box that defines who you are?
I hope Scoble and others enamored with this brave new technology rent Jurassic Park next weekend: not everything goes the way you expect when it comes to technology.
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Scoble sees the good side of a world where your attention is a commodity, but what about the bad side?
At what point does the commodization of attention become not a convenience but a box that defines who you are?
I hope Scoble and others enamored with this brave new technology rent Jurassic Park next weekend: not everything goes the way you expect when it comes to technology.
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Things about Ads I’d like. (None of this is new)
– As a publisher, more control over what ads appear on my site. Perhaps a pair of love, ban buttons on ads.
– As a customer, an RSS feed of Ads directly targeted at me or my business sector. Let me read stuff in my own time that I might actually be interested in. And you can work out what I’m interested in by what I click through. As a business, think of it as another form of clipping service. “Who’s advertising in my market niche?”
And a note. In order to make attention work and aggregate attention across multiple sites, we’re going to need much better identity services and much more personal control of our own privacy. Time to talk to Kim Cameron.
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Things about Ads I’d like. (None of this is new)
– As a publisher, more control over what ads appear on my site. Perhaps a pair of love, ban buttons on ads.
– As a customer, an RSS feed of Ads directly targeted at me or my business sector. Let me read stuff in my own time that I might actually be interested in. And you can work out what I’m interested in by what I click through. As a business, think of it as another form of clipping service. “Who’s advertising in my market niche?”
And a note. In order to make attention work and aggregate attention across multiple sites, we’re going to need much better identity services and much more personal control of our own privacy. Time to talk to Kim Cameron.
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Aggregation of attention data is both useful and scary. A friend of mine sent me the ACLU’s scare video (flash) relating to privacy concerns last week. They’re especially concerned about advertisers sharing data with the government. It reminded me also of the FBI’s effort to use the Patriot Act get libraries to reveal lending histories without supoenas. I’m glad to see smart people like Steve dealing with ways to put limits on the sharing of data without either prohibiting it or opening the floodgates.
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Aggregation of attention data is both useful and scary. A friend of mine sent me the ACLU’s scare video (flash) relating to privacy concerns last week. They’re especially concerned about advertisers sharing data with the government. It reminded me also of the FBI’s effort to use the Patriot Act get libraries to reveal lending histories without supoenas. I’m glad to see smart people like Steve dealing with ways to put limits on the sharing of data without either prohibiting it or opening the floodgates.
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Has it occurred to anyone here that the privacy argument was bound to surface and so create a contrarian discussion that actually supports the MSFT ethos of lock-in? I’ll bet it’s not lost on C-types at Redmond. But…the very prospect of turning the web into a direct 121 marketing machine doesn’t hold long term water.
There are inumerable complexities involved that require huge amounts of engineering and integration. Just how does MSFT propose to handle that? Oh yes, I just seen they plan to make integration their next big play. With what and to what I ask?
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Has it occurred to anyone here that the privacy argument was bound to surface and so create a contrarian discussion that actually supports the MSFT ethos of lock-in? I’ll bet it’s not lost on C-types at Redmond. But…the very prospect of turning the web into a direct 121 marketing machine doesn’t hold long term water.
There are inumerable complexities involved that require huge amounts of engineering and integration. Just how does MSFT propose to handle that? Oh yes, I just seen they plan to make integration their next big play. With what and to what I ask?
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Excellent post! I have been speaking on and around this topic the past couple years as part of the Personal InfoCloud work I have been doing. I finally got to present outside of the U.S.A., in Europe. The privacy questions come flying very quickly (one of two reasons I really wanted to present and get feed back outside the States, the other was feedback on the designing and developing across devices and platforms piece as Europe is ahead with broadband and mobile use and their developers are see the problems and are looking for solutions).
There are two parts to the privacy of attention that come into play.
One (Nick in comment 10 hit it on the head) – Who owns an manages the information. Many people believe they should own their Amazon records and so to be able to shop that information around to others. Similar to airline reward programs (you build up *status* with one airline but their service turns horrible, you want to sample other airline offerings, you want to take your flight history with you and get similar service so you can truly compare and be a well informed consumer – it is in the company’s interest to do this also as it will lead to a happy customer). In the business world this is called CMI (Consumer Managed Information).
Two – Privacy of the information. Who do we trust with access to the information. Some people trust Google (Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, etc.) with all their information, while others want to parse out who has access to what and how much information. You may not want everybody in your “trusted” network to know where you are (buying holiday presents, lets say).
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Excellent post! I have been speaking on and around this topic the past couple years as part of the Personal InfoCloud work I have been doing. I finally got to present outside of the U.S.A., in Europe. The privacy questions come flying very quickly (one of two reasons I really wanted to present and get feed back outside the States, the other was feedback on the designing and developing across devices and platforms piece as Europe is ahead with broadband and mobile use and their developers are see the problems and are looking for solutions).
There are two parts to the privacy of attention that come into play.
One (Nick in comment 10 hit it on the head) – Who owns an manages the information. Many people believe they should own their Amazon records and so to be able to shop that information around to others. Similar to airline reward programs (you build up *status* with one airline but their service turns horrible, you want to sample other airline offerings, you want to take your flight history with you and get similar service so you can truly compare and be a well informed consumer – it is in the company’s interest to do this also as it will lead to a happy customer). In the business world this is called CMI (Consumer Managed Information).
Two – Privacy of the information. Who do we trust with access to the information. Some people trust Google (Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, etc.) with all their information, while others want to parse out who has access to what and how much information. You may not want everybody in your “trusted” network to know where you are (buying holiday presents, lets say).
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Back in 2001 I held an auction to sell information about my likes and preferences. It became It’s My Profile…a C2B dotcom that allowed consumers to keep control of their information(and profit from it) yet still give advertisers much deeper information about potential customers. My timing stunk as we were looking for funding in the summer of 2001. The business was shuttered in 2002 but the plan is so compelling that others keep ‘inventing’ the idea. I do not take credit for the initial idea, that was Seth Godin – who liked our implementation – back in 97.
The information has value, great value, but privacy and ownership have to be addressed or any attempt by corporations to gather and profit without the consumer is doomed…DOOMED!
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Back in 2001 I held an auction to sell information about my likes and preferences. It became It’s My Profile…a C2B dotcom that allowed consumers to keep control of their information(and profit from it) yet still give advertisers much deeper information about potential customers. My timing stunk as we were looking for funding in the summer of 2001. The business was shuttered in 2002 but the plan is so compelling that others keep ‘inventing’ the idea. I do not take credit for the initial idea, that was Seth Godin – who liked our implementation – back in 97.
The information has value, great value, but privacy and ownership have to be addressed or any attempt by corporations to gather and profit without the consumer is doomed…DOOMED!
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interesting that Broadvision (www.broadvision.com) initiated a very similar project to what you described here waaay back in 1997 called THE ANGLE. Wonder what ever became of that… hmmm, wait I know… nothing because PRIVACY issues strapped the project to the desk and funding dried up because at that time advertisers just did not see the light.
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interesting that Broadvision (www.broadvision.com) initiated a very similar project to what you described here waaay back in 1997 called THE ANGLE. Wonder what ever became of that… hmmm, wait I know… nothing because PRIVACY issues strapped the project to the desk and funding dried up because at that time advertisers just did not see the light.
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The revolution here is the USER IN CONTROLL! (www.attentiontrust.org)
I can see a world where consumers have the leverage to say to marketers, if you want to do business with ME the requirement is to USE MY ATTENTION/ INTENTION DATA. My attention is scarce I don’t time to work with marketers who don’t respect my wishes.
You want to serve me ads? Fine, but stop using your inaccuate targeting systems that don’t work – USE MY ATTENTION/ INTENTIONS. (No more GoDaddy and Earthlink ads please. I have heard them each over 200 times. I have no use for Earthlink and I’m already a GoDaddy customer. PLEASE STOP!!!!)
You want to personalize your service to me? Fine, but stop using your inaccurate personalization systems based on your inaccurate siloed view of my data they don’t work – USE MY ATTENTION/ INTENTIONS.
Otherwise I refuse to view your ads and/or do business with you.
Privacy is a 1.0 problem…;-)
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The revolution here is the USER IN CONTROLL! (www.attentiontrust.org)
I can see a world where consumers have the leverage to say to marketers, if you want to do business with ME the requirement is to USE MY ATTENTION/ INTENTION DATA. My attention is scarce I don’t time to work with marketers who don’t respect my wishes.
You want to serve me ads? Fine, but stop using your inaccuate targeting systems that don’t work – USE MY ATTENTION/ INTENTIONS. (No more GoDaddy and Earthlink ads please. I have heard them each over 200 times. I have no use for Earthlink and I’m already a GoDaddy customer. PLEASE STOP!!!!)
You want to personalize your service to me? Fine, but stop using your inaccurate personalization systems based on your inaccurate siloed view of my data they don’t work – USE MY ATTENTION/ INTENTIONS.
Otherwise I refuse to view your ads and/or do business with you.
Privacy is a 1.0 problem…;-)
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HI to everyone!!
Did this captured your attention? Good!! =)
My question is:
WHAT DO WE WANT FOR THE FUTURE?
The desapearing of conventional advertising and a system that control all of our consuming moves = (END OF PRIVACY)
OR
Guerrila Marketing (creative Marketing that capture EVERYONE’S attention that creates experiences and a true proximity relation between brands and the final consumer), altough we will constantly watch and see brands in every corner.
PERHAPS SOME OF YOU GUYS HAVE A DIFFERENT AND ANOTHER VISION ABOUT IT
My best regards,
João Dias 24 years old
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HI to everyone!!
Did this captured your attention? Good!! =)
My question is:
WHAT DO WE WANT FOR THE FUTURE?
The desapearing of conventional advertising and a system that control all of our consuming moves = (END OF PRIVACY)
OR
Guerrila Marketing (creative Marketing that capture EVERYONE’S attention that creates experiences and a true proximity relation between brands and the final consumer), altough we will constantly watch and see brands in every corner.
PERHAPS SOME OF YOU GUYS HAVE A DIFFERENT AND ANOTHER VISION ABOUT IT
My best regards,
João Dias 24 years old
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