Mmmmm…..”Web 2.0“. I like to put quotes around it because I hate it. I don’t respect the term. I have a great disdain and distaste for it. I show my lack of respect for “Web 2.0″ with quotes. Fuck you “Web 2.0″, you are going in quotes.
It isn’t that I hate “Web 2.0″ the concept, it’s that I hate “Web 2.0″ the concept. Let me explain. CSS, XHTML, RSS, ATOM, XML, API’s….hell yah! Open Media 100, self-proclaimed, self-important bloggers glad-handing every other blogger with WordPress and a stupid idea ….vomit vomit vomit. Get it? I just can’t take it anymore. It’s reached the tipping point, it jumped the shark, its screwed the pooch, WHATEVER, it’s just nauseating.
I honestly believe that if someone like Seth Goldstein farted in a mic, recorded it as a .fart file, call it fartcasting, within 5 minutes, everyone on the open media 100 would be hailing it as world changing in a semi co-ordinated cyber circle jerk complete with sloppy track-backs.
Want an example? Glad you asked. It’s called AttentionTrust, and so far as I can tell, is complete bullshit.
I think this could be the one. This could be the masterpiece. This one blows my mind. I have read this post 5 times (at Pete’s urging), each time struggling to stay awake, and still have no god damned idea what the hell it is all about. Talk about a man who knows how to write a long winded, 3,000 word post about nothing. And to think, that post was supposed to be the one that made the ideas and concept behind AttentionTrust CLEARER, because the actual web site was so devoid of anything materially relevant or interesting, that it was truly impossible to understand what the fuck these digital hippies were talking about.
It really is amazing. But wait…it gets better! These guys actually went so far as to form a company…or site…or organization (they do have the little dot org)…or something together. For what, I’m not sure, since it is abundantly unclear what it is they do and how they intend to do it. But hey, why let a lack of clearly formulated intentions and ideas get in the way of starting an organization. Details man, details! As George Costanza said to the Ross’s as he was driving them out to his non-existent house in the Hamptons…”WE’RE TAKING IT UP A NOTCH!”.
As far as I can tell these are the accomplishments of AttentionTrust to date:
- They registered a domain (attentiontrust.org).
- They constructed a website using FrontPage, or some equivalent.
- They told me what trust means.
- They began requesting money. A lot of money.
- They wrote 497,000 words across 3 blog posts about it.
Did I miss anything?
Now before you send me hate mail, or leave me hate comments (which are all held in moderation, but I approve them ALL unless they are spam so be patient…I’m looking at you TDavid), take a moment, put down the Technorati flavored kool-aid, look away from Slash-dot or John Battelle’s blog, or whatever you were looking at, put the Always On magazine back under the mattress, and think about what AttentionTrust does, and how they do it. Hell, even what they intend to do, and how they intend to do it. Please try not to blindly tow the company line on this one. Once you have thought about that, explain it to me, in less than 50 words, so that I can understand it. Because I don’t.
July 28th, 2005 at 9:48 am
Preach on Andrew. But how about we knock down that 50 words you asked for into one sentence. Becuase if you can’t describe it in a sentance, then who cares? After all, this is supposed to be about attention, and reading all this stuff is sure wasting a lot of mine.
July 28th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
This is awesome feedback and I would love to have you subscribe to my Ajax-driven, folksononimic fartcast. It will literally blow your eyebrows off.
There is much that I bullshit about, but I actually care about attentiontrust and think it has merit. It takes me too long and requires too many words to get most of my ideas across, but these are hard, new, complex issues that dont reduce that well to 50 words. But for attentiontrust to work, it needs to become stupid simple. I am interested in chatting with you (phone/person?) to come up with a sentence that makes sense and in general hearing more about what you do think is important.
-s
July 29th, 2005 at 9:59 am
Seth,
I talked to Pete Caputa and he actually had a much clearer explanation of what AttentionTrust is all about. I still am admitedly skeptical about how this will all work, but you seem to have a solid reputation for making things happen, so due to that fact alone I have some extra faith.
I just loathe marketing overspeak, and love simplicity in a message. For some reason, people starting Internet businesses and/or ventures in particular, LOVE the fancy-talk. Because of this, what should be simple messages often tend to get garbled and overly-flowery and lost on relatively smart and tech savvy people like myself.
Be happy to talk some time. I think you are in NYC right? I am not much of a phone guy outside of work where I am paid in part to use the phone, but I would definitely be down for chatting sometime.
July 29th, 2005 at 11:24 am
I feel like I’m watching Perseus confront Medusa in ‘Clash of the Titans’. Stay strong Andrew. Don’t be tempted by this wicked, uh, temptress-guy. You don’t need his attention or his trust. Just a good sense of humor while watching cornball’s get excited because they found the internet.
July 29th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
I would really be interested in hearing a fartcast. I bet it would go over better than beercasting…which was really nothing more than a bunch of gas coming out of mouths rather than anuses.
August 17th, 2005 at 11:24 am
Andrew, I read Seth’s posts several times and listened to the Gillmor Gang podcast 2x. Very confusing and longwinded. But it’s worth digging down to understand what Seth is saying or not saying (because maybe he’s building a business around this).
I do agree with a lot of your comments about the Open Media 100. The irony about that is with all the hoopla over social participative media the A-Listers have created their own little Media Oligopoly.
However, AttentionTrust is the wrong intitiative to criticize because this represents a fundamental shift in the relationship between media, marketers and consumers.
As a consumer there are thousands of companies out there attempting to collect behavioral data (attention.data) about me and use that to their economic benefit without my permission.
1> because they only see a very small subset of my data, they do a marginal job at best at this
2> by collecting, storing and appending this information, these companies consistently abuse my privacy - despite what their trivial privacy policies say
3> who owns this data? the collector, the collected or both?
AttentionTrust says to me the consumer:
Property - I own my attention and can store it wherever I wish. I have CONTROL. - MY DATA IS MY DATA.
Mobility - I can securely move my attention wherever I want whenever I want to. I have the ability to TRANSFER my attention.data - IF I CHOOSE, I MAY MAKE MY ATTENTION.DATA AVAILABLE TO MEDIA AND MARKETERS ON MY TERMS.
Economy - I can pay attention to whomever I wish and receive value in return. My attention has WORTH. MY ATTENTION.DATA HAS VALUE TO MEDIA AND MARKETERS - I WANT A REV OR VALUE SHARE!
Transparency - I can see exactly how my attention is being used. I can DECIDE who I trust. NO ONE CAN ABUSE MY ATTENTION.DATA BECAUSE I CAN SEE EXPLICITLY HOW IT”S BEING USED.
At the end the of the day it’s about consumers saying to media and marketers:
1> Stop your futile attempts to aggregate and append my data!
2> Stop abusing my privacy!
3> Stop shouting non relevant advertising messages at me!
3> No one can aggregate my attention.data better than me! I see ALL my attention.data you don’t! I know what I want!
4> I will give you access (share not store) to my attention.data in exchange for value - personalization and/or relevance and/or connivence and/or currency.
5> You will win because you will be able to serve my needs more efficiently and effectively without abusing my privacy.
6> If you want my business in the future you will agree to this.
So it is sort of a Consumer Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence! So that’s what AttentionTrust is.
Next, someone needs to build the platform to enable this and the specific applications that leverage the AttentionData, the AttentionTrust platform, with respect to the AttentionTrust policy.
I hope that helps!
September 8th, 2005 at 4:58 am
LOL
This was a good post but so was David Henderson’s repost. At the moment there is a lot of hype and hot air around Attention Trust (AT) but IF the potential can be turned into a reality then who knows what the possibilities will be.
I am currently building an AT platform barter system where consumers will be able to trade elements of their personal data (if they want to sell it) in exchange for goods/services.
I agree many people have spoken about how marketeers and large companies will use/exploit attention metadata. I hope to be one of the companeis that turn the table in favour of the consumer.
September 30th, 2005 at 4:56 am
Oh LORD this is so much hooey!!!
No one OWNS their data. Attention is not a THING.
And after reading a handful of blogs talking about “attention streams”, “open cloud[s] of reputational presence”, “lightweight transient superset[s]” I feel more than vaguely sullied… as if I were locked in a closet not with Vanna White (which would be bad enough), but rather with a hell-spawn’d crossbreed of the worst of geeks, PR people, business textbook writers, and fictional The Onion persona all in one.
I get it, I get it. This is a solution in search of a problem. This is privacy advocates who, infuriated that people will give up their shopping habits for a 10 cent discount, are flailingly trying to come up with different ammunition. This is people who can’t think for themselves, drooling along the bandwagon of blogleaders who dangle deliciously obscure and often made-up words and concepts, so they (the words and bloggers) MUST be important.
Puleaze.
I’m all for privacy rights. Gimme sound privacy policies and teeth to back them up. Gimme ways to see and correct mistaken data about me held by the credit bureaus.
But my attention is an emphemeal, non-monetizable concept. And such a stupid thing to glob into and link with privacy rights, personalization, and so many other issues that ARE actually important and worth discussing.
Grrr… I get angry just typing this. Such a waste of brain capital. And my attention.
November 19th, 2005 at 5:18 am
50 words, eh? Hmm, a challenge.
“AttentionTrust is attempting to turn consumer activity data into a commoditised product. Its strategy is to lure consumers in with the false consciousness of “ownership”. However, attention data is only useful to large corporations, plus the arbitrageurs (like Seth) who want to trade attention like futures traders sell pork bellies.”
August 4th, 2006 at 11:07 am
I’ll try it the way the procuders of Talladega Nights pitched their movie idea to studios.
“Stop Tagging. Start Tracking. Meaning: Stop Tagging.”
October 10th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
reading that post was the equivalent of waiting for a 5 mg flash intro page
to load.
thk u and gd nite. eb
November 14th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Throw the Bullshit Flag!