I've been talking with the folks at AttentionTrust for a few weeks, and I just agreed to help turn this concept into a reality by serving as Executive Director. I'll still be working with the great people at Beaconfire, so my time management skills are going to be severely tested
So just what is AttentionTrust? Let's start with some language from the AttentionTrust site that I helped to draft:
Any time you pay attention to something (and any time you ignore something), data is created. That data has value, but only if it's gathered, measured, and analyzed. Right now, you generally lack the ability to capture that data for yourself, so you can't benefit from it. But what if you could? And what if you could share your data with other people, who were also capturing their own data, or if you could exchange your data for something of value with companies and other institutions that were interested in learning more about the things that interested you? You'd be in control--you would decide who has access to what data, as well as what you'd accept in exchange for access to your data.
The mission of AttentionTrust is helping to give people control over their "attention data" to enable them to participate in the emerging "attention economy" on their own terms. That mission starts with education--making people aware that attention data exists--and empowerment--encouraging people to assert their rights to own, transfer and exchange their attention data as they see fit.
The next step is helping people to actually capture and manage their data in a practical, user-friendly way, and we hope to have some news on that front shortly.
(It's also important to note what AttentionTrust is NOT. We will not be a repository for users' attention data, and we will not be capturing or analyzing users' data.)
