AttenTV turns Web surfing into eerie spectator sport

(continued from previous page)

While the concept of having someone watch the Web sites you visit seems invasive or exhibitionist or both, attention fans like to couch it as a way to exact control over something already being used by marketers and Web sites every day. What we pay attention to is clearly worth something: credit services company Experian paid $240 million in cash for search-data collector Hitwise and its clickstream database.

Experian is essentially buying a way to view the behavior of consumers, who probably don't even know they're being observed. "The day is going to come quickly where we are going to want to be recognized for the value we're providing to other people," said Goldstein. "Instead of them doing it without our knowledge, I think it's much more powerful to be in a world where you have control over what people know about you."

Henderson said, for instance, that he'd love for a site like that for The New York Times to have access to his entire Web clickstream, not just what pages he views within nytimes.com. So when he visits that news site, his experience would be completely personalized, without Henderson having to answer any surveys or provide other information.

The idea for AttenTV was sparked last year, Goldstein said, when he began pondering a way to visualize how we spend our time online. This is just his latest venture within the so-called attention economy, however. Goldstein is also founder of AttentionTrust, which seeks to protect consumers' rights to own their data records, and founder of Root Markets, which offers Root.net software that enables people to keep an online "vault" of their Internet footprints.

Many more attention-economy applications will likely have to start cropping up before the idea takes off, however. Until then, social utility is the most important value that anyone can hope to get out of AttenTV, according to Goldstein.

"It has to work as a social environment first--before you try to monetize it," he said. "And, it has to be entertaining in and of itself. Otherwise you'll never get an audience large enough."

Only about 30 people are broadcasting their streams on AttenTV so far.

Among them is Derrick Oien, president of a mobile social-networking company. He joined AttenTV a couple weeks ago and says he finds attention broadcasting "extremely fascinating." He especially likes that he can see what one of his favorite bloggers, Fred Wilson--another AttenTV broadcaster--is looking at on the Web. Oien says he finds that many of the AttenTV users read the same sites he does.

Interesting, perhaps, but where does the "customized" Web experience come in? Clickstream broadcasting is still in its infancy. To progress, more average Web surfers need to be comfortable with the idea of voluntarily exposing their Web surfing habits. There's no real incentive to sign up yet, but there could be if marketers start buying that information or developers start building applications to use all that clickstream data.

"If it stays an academic idea, then it's not important," said Oien. That's why he's volunteered to be an attention guinea pig. "If you're going to be a supporter of this kind of thing, you have to hold yourself out as an example of someone who's exploring those tools."

It may be its very early stages, but AttenTV could be a viable business someday. Goldstein says he is by nature "focused more on the theory and the concept first." The next step is to show a proof of concept--that is, how this data revealing our online habits can be interesting to other people, such as friends, family or people on our social networks. "Or, if I'm really popular," Goldstein said, "my fans."

[thedreaming]

Not really a new concept

Back in the days of Virtual Places people could join "tour buses" where one person would take the "riders" on a tour of his or her favorite websites. Their browser would load up whatever url his/her browser was pointing to and people would share the web surfying experience.

This is similar, you either send out your url or you're receiving it from whoever you're watching.

People like to watch, that's why tv is still a popular form of entertainment.