Scoble’s Link Blog

Attention.xml is a new technology standard that’s being proselytized by influencers like Steve Gillmor, David Sifry, Robert Scoble and Jeremy Zawodny. Basically it is metadata that records and shares information on the “attention” users give to their RSS feeds and blogs.

Scoble saidthat by the end of 2005 we’ll all know what attention.xml is and whyit’s important for the services we choose to support it. Listening to this podcast with Steve Gillmor and Chris Pirillo today, I could not help but agree.

Aggregated metadata (definition) projects like attention.xml and Richard MacManus’ collaborative Feedburner stat project, could have a lot of value for PR professionals. Attention.xml could tell us who looks at a blog or feed, howoften they look at it, where those viewers come from, and more,according to a piece Gillmor wrote for Release 1.0. If it really gets off the ground, it could have a massive impact on the PR professional because it will solve some of the industry’s measurement issues(we still have to talk about how we boost the bottom line!).

Beforeattention.xml can get going, however, there are some stumblingblocks such asprivacy/technical issues and questions over who should own the standard that need to be overcome first.

One of the questions I get often is “how can I tell how influential a blogger is/isn’t?” As Scoble says, you can look at how many subscribers they have on Bloglines, how many in-bound links they have on Technorati, etc., but we need more. Now imagine for a moment you can look at an RSS feed on My Yahooand see how many people have read the same post you’re reading or howmany page views it is getting, etc. What if you could get an RSS feedthat notifies you every time there are blog posts that are read by morethan 100,000 people? Attention.xml as I understand it could make thatpossible (correct me if I am wrong please). I don’t know about you, butI would subscribe to that feed.

Going a step further, consider thepossibilities if the mainstream media (MSM) adopted attention.xml aswell. This could happen if the big RSS feed aggregators get behind it.

The MSM is increasingly merging with the blogosphere into oneunisphere. Some blogs break news stories and have thousands ofsubscribers. Meanwhile, media sites are launching branded RSS readers, blogs, podcasts and even adopting trackbacks and comments.It is conceivable that if there is a groundswell of love forattention.xml from the blogosphere, it could tip the hand of the bigguys towards adopting it.

So, go with me for a moment. Let’s say this happens in a year ortwo’s time. Imagine how valuable this aggregated information would be.PR professionals and marketers could spec out the exact number ofpeople who saw anarticle online – including both the site that generated it and theblogs that linked to it. There’s no guessing. Attention.xml or whateverbecomes the standard would go a long way to helping the publicrelations industry measure the value of media placements, but it has toget off the ground first. I support aggregated metadata if it’s a truestandard (e.g. no one single company owns it) and the privacyissues are solved and urge everyone in PR to do the same.