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Thinking thru AttentionXML before EBIG SIG next week

Next week, the EBIG Blogging/RSS SIG will focus on AttentionXML. It’s important and useful. Come and find out what it’s all about. This time we’ve got Steve Gillmor to share his view on this tech, where he thinks it’s headed, and what it means.

I’m still learning about AttentionXML, so my impressions may change. I’ve played with Technorati’s demo and haven’t learned all that much. I’d like to take a more customized approach to AttentionXML rather than follow the simple (haha) Technorati approach of ranking by links. That reflects both my work as a researcher (seeking out the new, or at least not the fully-processed) and a sort of renegade sense of populism.

Yes, populism is different than popular; we need to be democratic rather than exclusive. This is especially the case when we are discussing systems that make information decisions for us. Humans are best at surfacing ideas; systems are best for counting mentions. I will depend on algorithms really only for the stuff that I don’t care about. My usage of Google News is a great example. I can safely say that it’s changed my life: I now have that modicum of Hollywood and sports info I need to pass a social Turing test.

It may be my own barrier, but so much of blogging seems to be referring to the popular kids. That’s nice, but I only need to see Engadget or TechDirt once a day (which I typically read there), not endless links without real commentary, just pointing out what Russ happened to post today (when I started writing this at 8:00am I discovered his site was hacked this AM by Spanish apemen. Very cute! I mean, Poor Russ! I saved a copy here) .

For my purposes, I am interested in cursory understanding of what’s new and “in play”, but mostly on my interest du jour. And when I’m tracking along, I’m looking for perspectives and kernels of thought. I worry that using the model of popularity to fuel AttentionXML will turn it into a hype machine. AttentionXML has to do more than the Technorati-counting-mentions approach. It has to cover not just the huge spikes of the daily churn, but also (if I am ever going to trust it) to point to things that I, given my interest and aims, should pay attention to. I really hope it doesn’t end up being some sort of blogoid “Daily Planet”, some dynamically generated version of that Tony Perkins AlwaysOn blog magazine - my nominee for dumbest idea of the year (info via Jason Calcanis’ blog). The Technorati tags take us a big step in this direction (though I still have to begin applying them beyond category tags).

These things have to be architected with attention to both how we use the blogosphere now, and how people will want to use it as it matures (because it’s not right now). Buzz tracking centered around *who* is talking about it is just one use case.

For my work, the most critical use case is freshness of the information on a topic. Finding out what people are saying *right now* about a given topic is what I seek almost every day. This is independent of the “authority” of the person and the current buzz (another use case is to graph this over time). For example, that’s how I use Feedster’s blog search for that. It’s true that Mike now works there, but I gave the same input to Kevin Marks of Trati back at the Dec SF geek dinner. I’m not certain, but my ideas might have flowed into their search changes made the next week, but it didn’t seem to do what I wanted, and I’ve never had a chance to follow up with Kevin.

Yet another use case (one I find particularly worthwhile) is to integrate something like AttentionXML with social networking so I can tell what my friends are interested in. For mobile, I have a certain group of friends who would, through their browsing behavior, unearth really neat things. Same for my friends who sew. I would like to trust my network to help me browse and read, in a way that is more than just reading their blogs.

That’s the sort of reason I could see going into the thinking behind SixApart buying LiveJournal : LiveJournal makes the community aspect easy. Perhaps somewhere in there they can come up with a way to atomize the inherently stream of consciousness, multi-topic nature of blogs so individual posts can be linked back in to some metaphorical discussion list. Some people do this now and are really good at this. But I find this distributed conversation hard to manage.

I’m happy the concept of Technorati tags seems compatible with the del.ico.us model. Del.ico.us is important and I keep steadfast hope I can ever get in the habit of using it. It’s either going to be a million entries for me - a real link blog, or it’s going to be the cream of the crop. I guess it will have to be everything because my desire to only make meaningful entries (which already go here, most of them) has just held up the process. Another thing to do today.

So amusingly, just after my autism post (written yesterday, but was unable to reach network), we might be watching the switch from the think and stew to me actually doing work. That and my antibiotics kicked in.