background preloader

The Attention Economy: An Overview

The Attention Economy: An Overview
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus It is no secret that we live in an information overload age. The explosion of new types of information online is a double-edged sword. We both enjoy and drown in news, blogs, podcasts, photos, videos and cool MySpace pages. And the problem is only going to get worse, as more and more people discover the new web. Because of this information explosion, we no longer read - we skim. Economics of Attention Things get more interesting when we realize that our attention crisis is not only our problem. When information is abundant, the false positives are very costly - they are basically deal breakers. Attention Economy Concepts The basic ideas behind the Attention Economy are simple. It is important to realize that the key ingredient in the attention game is relevancy. Another key ingredient of the Attention Economy is privacy. AttentionTrust Something as big as an Attention Economy needs a solid foundation. Technology of Attention

Goldhaber If the Web and the Net can be viewed as spaces in which we will increasingly live our lives, the economic laws we will live under have to be natural to this new space. These laws turn out to be quite different from what the old economics teaches, or what rubrics such as "the information age" suggest. What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention. The attention economy brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions - stars vs. fans - and its own forms of property, all of which make it incompatible with the industrial-money-market based economy it bids fair to replace. Success will come to those who best accommodate to this new reality. Explanatory note: This article began as a draft of a conference[ * ] presentation, and has been left pretty much in that form. This is a conference on the "Economics of Digital Information." My vantage point is quite different. certainty, let me invoke two different analogies. This analogy is imperfect in one way though.

Pour une écologie informationnelle On s’enthousiasme facilement des innovations quotidiennes que proposent l’actualité des technologies de l’information. Qu’il s’agisse des innovations technologiques, toutes présentées comme devant révolutionner le monde ; de la pléthore de nouveaux services, tous censés bouleverser les équilibres de leurs secteurs respectifs ; et bien sûr des nouvelles pratiques, d’autant plus méritoires dans ce dédale de nouveautés. Peut-être faut-il surtout voir dans cette course à l’innovation et à l’utilisation de ces monceaux de gadgets le reflet d’un comportement psychologique, d’une addiction à la nouveauté, comme l’explique le neurologue Irving Biederman, qui montre qu’une nouvelle information déclenche chez chacun d’entre nous des réactions d’ordre chimique qui nous font nous sentir bien. Nos outils n’évoluent pas à l’aune de nos pratiques Pourtant, si on prend un peu de recul, qu’est-ce qui a vraiment changé dans nos pratiques depuis 10 ans ? Information overload Vers l’économie de l’attention ?

The Implicit Web: Last.fm, Amazon, Google, Attention Trust As we rush through life and a myriad of web pages, we leave traces. We don't have time to think deeply about any of this. The blogs that we visit, the music we listen to, the movies we watch; we take all of them for granted. Yet, all of the different kinds of information that we interact with defines us. In turn, we change the world by issuing a verdict of what we like and what we do not like. Sometimes explicitly via bookmarking, rating and digging. The concept of the Implicit Web has been around for some time. What is the Implicit Web? The basic concept of the Implicit Web is simple. Things we pay attention to What if there was a way to capture our choices automatically? The Mechanics of the Implicit Web The Implicit Web is powered by clicks. Typically, software that powers recommendation engines or search engines takes clicks, time and actions as inputs and feeds them into a sophisticated optimization algorithm. Last.fm - the Implicit Web at its best Conclusion

The attention economy explained by David Gauntlett Basic Web Economics:How things work in the 'attention economy' This page explains how people make money from giving away information free over the Web, and how the internet has (arguably) brought about a whole new economy -- the 'attention economy' -- where traditional wealth becomes less important than the ability to capture people's attention. But let's start at the beginning... I hear that the people who invented the web directory Yahoo! There are now loads of people who have become millionaires by devising websites which people want to visit. In the same way, you get to access Web services, such as the Yahoo! Yahoo! Numerous other Web services, such as free e-mail and free web space, are paid for in the same way. Not all of these services are actually making a profit at the moment, though. Indeed -- it seems that some people have become millionaires even though their web concepts are currently making a huge loss. Has anyone successfully charged for access to a website? Yes and no.

Médias & Publicité : Les internautes délaissent un peu Google De nouveaux sites réunissent aujourd'hui les passionnés autour de centres d'intérêt communs. Un défi pour le géant américain et son moteur de recherche. Le Web fait sa mue. Avec Facebook et Twitter, les internautes ont constaté qu'ils pouvaient découvrir des contenus sur Internet grâce à leurs amis et plus seulement en faisant des recherches sur Google. Ce basculement vers un Web de la recommandation va aujourd'hui un cran plus loin. Aux États-Unis, Pinterest est devenu un véritable phénomène. D'autres services, dont le projet de départ n'était pas de créer de tels «index» thématiques du Web, y ont été poussés par leurs utilisateurs. De même, le site de questions-réponses Quora a adapté son offre en lançant le service «Boards» fin décembre 2011. Des cibles recherchées par les marques «Ce n'est pas la fin du moteur de recherche, car on en aura toujours besoin pour chercher un coiffeur pour enfants à San Francisco.

Turntable.fm's Seth Goldstein On Monetizing Music Discovery & User Engagement Turntable.fm has gotten off to a strong start since launching in May with $7 million in funding and 600,000 users just three months in. Since then Turntable has continued to grow and catch media attention and is now developing relationships with record labels. Cofounder Seth Goldstein discussed business model and monetization possibilities with VatorNews (video below) and at Billboard FutureSound. Turntable.fm Cofounder Seth Goldstein Interviewed on VatorNews Following a very successful summer, Turntable.fm has continued its buzz-building run with an opening spot on Wale's "Ambition Tour" and the early signs of iconic status as other startups become known as the "Turntable.fm for [fill in the blank]". At last week's Billboard FutureSound conference, Seth Goldstein revealed that Turntable now "has a million registered users and a passionate core of 20-40,000 daily active users...who use it an average of 10 hours per month."

The digitization of the music industry vs. the book world: the ultimate overview (part II) Previously in this series: how the digitization of the music industry went. Today: the world of books, tomorrow the similarities and the day after tomorrow the differences between these two worlds. Together they form a four-part series written by Timo Boezeman and Niels Aalberts, with important additions and nuances by Erwin Blom, Eric Rigters and Jelte Nieuwenhuis. Books: from paper to e-bookThe book world is often referred to as an ancient industry. The digitization of the book itself goes back to 1971, the year when Michael S. Books: growth of the digital formatIt is often said that the sales of e-books in The Netherlands are three years behind on the U.S. Books and music: dealing with that changeWhen an industry digitalizes, all sorts of problems come across your path. If the book world could learn just one thing from the music industry, it is that you cannot stop the digitization.

Active vs. Passive Fans: Why Radio & TV Still Rank Tops For Music Discovery The data presented in a recent NPD Group/NARM study found terrestrial radio and syndicated television among the main influential sources of music discovery (60% and 49% respectively). With all the new avenues for music discovery out there, why are the majority of people still choosing to shape their musical tastes through premeditated and controlled media sources? By assessing the data, it leads one to believe that the majority of music consumers are not taking full advantage of this new media age we live in. If terrestrial radio and passive television still sit atop the music discovery food chain, does this must mean that people haven’t quite caught on to the ease and usefulness of personalized music discovery, or are they just lazy and don’t want to go through the trouble of shifting their paradigms? The study used the term “active” music fan – which seems to mean anyone who goes out of their way beyond just passive media to find the music they think they’ll enjoy. What do you think?

Market Research | Consumer Market Research - NPD - NARM and The NPD Group Unveil Results of Research Report on Consumers and Music Discovery MARLTON, N.J. and PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y., November 10, 2011 – Music business association NARM and leading market research company The NPD Group today released findings of a joint study that examined the ways consumers discover new music. The report indicates that while music discovery is still vital to the industry, it applies differently to various consumer groups, and it has changed significantly since the organizations last studied the topic in 2007, as television and social media and other digital services have emerged as major influencers. According to the study’s findings, more than 80 percent of all respondents were interested in learning about new music from artists they were already fans of, and 60 percent were interested in learning about unfamiliar artists in genres that they usually buy. “Now that we have these insights, the music industry can look at how to deliver to consumers the information they want about new music,” said Jim Donio, president of NARM.

Science et curation : nouvelle pratique du Web 2.0 Internet permet de publier et d’échanger chaque jour des milliards de données, auxquelles accèdent plus de 2 milliards de personnes dans le monde. Cette masse d’information rend difficile, lorsque l’on mène une recherche, la différentiation entre le bruit de fond et les informations pertinentes et utiles. De plus, ces recherches sont chronophages et peuvent dépasser largement le temps que nous avons à y consacrer. Aujourd’hui, Google et les moteurs de recherche spécialisés comme Google Scholar reposent sur des algorithmes éprouvés. La curation sur le World Wide Web ©Beboy-Fotolia Web 2.0 : nouvelles pratiques, nouveaux usages Pour répondre à ce besoin, c’est naturellement que des intermédiaires humains encapacités par la vague participative du web 2.0 sont venus affiner le tri de l’information et apporter un angle d’analyse et du contexte. Le mot curation, contrairement à une idée reçue, ne provient pas d’un néologisme issu de l’anglais mais du monde des arts plastiques. ©Zothen-Fotolia

De la conquête du far-web à celle du near-me Des premiers annuaires de recherche aux monopoles actuels de quelques moteurs, la conquête du web a connu de nombreuses étapes qui visaient à permettre d'embrasser l'extrême diversité, l'extrême réticularité des contenus disponibles. Du World Wide Web au World Life Web en passant par le Word Live Web. INTERROGATION. En 2003, commençant à travailler avec un collègue sur la notion - aujourd'hui omniprésente - de sérendipité, et nous pointons l'opacité des algorithmes de recherche et le danger qu'elle pose à l'échelle d'une écologie cognitive de l'information et de la connaissance, c'est à dire à l'échelle de notre accès quotidien à l'information : "Quand nous consultons une page de résultat de Google ou de tout autre moteur utilisant un algorithme semblable, nous ne disposons pas simplement du résultat d'un croisement combinatoire binaire entre des pages répondant à la requête et d'autres n'y répondant pas ou moins (matching). AGGLUTINATION. RECOMMANDATION. Search+ your world.

Heuristique et sérendipité : un exemple en images Recherche d'informations sur Internet, sérendipité et heuristique Paru en 2008, l'article de Nick Carr Is Google Making us Stupid? critiquait les effets d'Internet sur nos facultés de cognition. Selon l'auteur, l'usage intensif du réseau et singulièrement des outils de recherche altèrerait nos capacités de concentration et de réflexion. L'article a été largement discuté dans les médias et la blogosphère. « Quand je suis plongé dans la recherche de connaissances sur le Web, sautant de lien en lien, lisant en profondeur à un certain moment, survolant des centaines de liens un peu plus tard, quand je suis amené à formuler et reformuler des requêtes et à dévorer de nouvelles connexions plus rapidement que Google et le Web ne sont capables de me les proposer, quand je réalise du bricolage en temps réel durant des heures, je « sens » que mon cerveau s'éclaire, c'est comme si je devenais plus intelligent ». Une règle heuristique est une stratégie qui s'appuie sur l’expérience.

Related: