God, Google and Root.net

These guys downtown here in NYC continue to interest me. Not really because they sell mortgage leads on an exchange, but because of this interesting concept of "attention economy" they are developing, which basically says



1. Your attention is an asset, which you (should) own.
2. Your data relative to what you are currently and historically paying attention to on the internet is valuable to marketers.
3. In a market of the future, you can voluntarily release your attention data to marketers in return for some form of compensation.

So, I attached an "Attention Recorder" Firefox plug-in back in March. This plug-in allows me to save my own clickstream data, and have it stored with authorized third parties, such as Root. See above screenshot of my "Vault".

I am with them on 1 and 2. Looking at my Vault data on and off for the past 6 months, I'm not so sure anyone would want or be willing to pawn it off to marketers. It is a brutal reflection of what actually takes up my time and my attention every day, listing and organizing each search query I make, every site I visit, and how much time I spend there.

The reflection is so acurate and powerful, I'm not sure why one would make it public, let alone allow it to be used commercially.

To me, the attention asset only becomes palatable as an object to share or sell if one were able to modify, filter or otherwise dress up its content. As in reality, sharing the appropriate pieces with the appropriate audience.

My raw clickstream - only God, Google and Root.net knows.