Attention-casting

There has been a lot of talk about the idea of "life streaming" lately. The term, however, doesn't sit right with me. Life streaming is defined as the use of one online web service to collect RSS feeds and aggregate them into chronological order. The problem I have is that it's not life-streaming. Justin.tv is true life streaming. If you want my life-stream you'll have to follow me around with a camera (which would be pretty boring most days).

What you are streaming is your attention and so I am re-terming this attention-casting. My attention-casting locations look at what I post on this blog, what I bookmark on del.icio.us, the videos I add to YouTube, the items from other people's feeds (350+) that I think are important, photos I take and add to Flickr and items I digg on Digg.com. All of these feeds, when combined in chronological order, tell you what has my attention at that moment and lets you see trends as they happen.

The latest stream that I've created is on Twitter under the username TechnoMarketer. This feed is the best way to see what I think is important in the world of social media in close to real-time. If you decide to follow me there you'll know within 30 minutes when I:

• Share an item in my Google Reader account I think is valuable (this is how I build my Buzz Friday posts too)
  
• Post a video on YouTube (way before I blog about it)
  
• Digg something on Digg.com
  
• Bookmark something on del.icio.us
  
• Add a photo to Flickr
  
• Add a new blog post here on Techno//Marketer
  

I do this through the service Twitterfeed.com which looks for updates from each service every 30 minutes and creates a new Tweet at the TechnMarketer account. Even if you don't use Twitter, you can subscribe to the feed from that account or you can subscribe at one of the other services I use for the same purpose (Jaiku and Tumblr).

One problem with this, and my biggest point of contention, is that this is one-way communication. Because these are aggregated from other services, there is little chance of feedback unless you come back from the original source. I do, however, think that there is value here is being able to see what I think is important almost immediately if you want to stay up to date on news and trends in new media and marketing.

What do you think? Is it valuable to you? Do you like to get information in one big chunk like my Buzz Friday posts?

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, attention-casting

Comments

[Greg Verdino]

Great post Matt.

[Matt Dickman]

Greg -- Thank you! Glad you liked it. I'm trying to refine what feeds I add in to show more and more trends through this.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Attention-casting is the part that resonates most with me about this post. In the end the most valuable piece of marketing intel on people is going to be what they focus their energy on, what matters to them.

hmmm... let me noodle over this a bit more. There's some meat at the end of this thought. I might think about it as I clean up my desk for the brand new iMac this weekend ;-)

[Matt Dickman]

Valeria -- Attention and focus are the key points for me too. Oh, can't wait til you're working on a Mac! I'm heading out to buy Leopard this afternoon.