Google reader to support APML?

In his latest post about Google Reader on Read/Write Web, Marshall asks about the lack of APML support:

"I also wonder what the Google Reader team says behind closed doors about the proposed Attention Data standard, APML. It's great that Google Reader gives me access to data about my reading habits, but I'd like to take my data to other apps for personalization, thank you very much."

He rightly suggests that the new Bloglines push might very well outpace Google by choosing to support more innovative and open standards in their reader.

Steven Ashley suggests that APML support is already on the roadmap:

"Hopefully just because they are no longer in Beta, Google Reader will still continue its fast pace of new feature implementation. Still expected support for 40 different languages and feed recommendation system. In the future support for the proposed Attention Data standard, APML is also expected."

Does he have inside information?

Collaborative Recommendation 3.0

Every now and then someone asks 'Why don't you build Collaborative Recommendation into Particls'.

In case you don't know, Collaborative Recommendation is when a system uses the recommendation of many people to 'decide' that a piece of content is worth seeing. So, like Digg for example, if 100 people vote that something is great (vote is a word I use loosely here), then it is probably worth seeing.

There are a few answers to that question.

1. Particls is really about filtering noise out - not discovering new recommended content (even though we provide some of that functionality just to get novice users started).
   
2. There are plenty of other great collaborative recommendation services out there, stick the RSS feed into Particls and there you go.
   
3. Google's PageRank and Technorati's Authority is already a form of Collaborative Recommendation - it isn't really very new.
   
4. The next generation of Collaborative Recommendation is actually something different. Let's call it Collaborative Filtering 3.0 or... Peer LifeStreams + Personal Relevancy

You have friends (hopefully); they have lifestreams (or at the very least RSS feeds from all their social/sharing sites) - plug their feeds into Particls and we filter out the stuff you don't care about. What's left? Stuff your friends 'recommended' that you actually care about. Collaborative Recommendation done right.

If you want to add me to your Collaborative Recommendation lineup, you can find me on Jaiku

Dangerous Moves - Google news cutting content deals?

According to Techcrunch and the rest of the Techmeme world:

"Scotland's Sunday Herald is running a story reporting that Google has secretly
reached deals with several large UK news groups to formally license content for Google News."

They go on to write

"The issue is not Google's alone. In theory any site that indexes and provides snippets of content from big media companies could easily face the same problem. Topix and Digg immediately come to mind, let alone the many smaller startups and personal sites that index news from the mainstream media."

Kevin Burton from Tailrank and Spin3r posts in the comments:

"You're wrong that Google News would face problems if they ran ads. These publishers needs Google News more than they need them.

Even if they DO run ads everyone wins. Google News only shows a small fraction of he article mandating a clickthrough . A rising tide lifts all boats.

We run a pretty deep crawl with Spinn3r (and have similar issues with ads running on Tailrank) and we've only had a few people ask to be removed.

Kevin"

Unless these deals are about expanding Google's rights beyond fair use (i.e. the right to use full content rather than just snippets), this is a dangerous move for the syndication and aggregation ecosystems who rely on fair use and opt-out mechanisms

As Duncan says on Techcrunch, this can affect all sorts of services everywhere and if Google makes these deals it could:

1. Set a precedent that could be destructive for innovation and fair use.


2. If Google makes moves to make the deals exclusive the implications could be even more significant.

This is an unsettling move that should be followed closely.

Google is exposing more of your Attention Data

As we've mentioned before, Google is collecting your Attention Data. They have been doing it for a long time. So has Amazon and others. They use it to learn about you as an individual and us as a market.

Today Google has decided to expose more of that Attention Data back to you and allow you to search on it.

From the blog post:

"Today, we're pleased to announce the launch of Web History, a new feature for Google Account users that makes it easy to view and search across the pages you've visited. If you remember seeing something online, you'll be able to find it faster and from any computer with Web History. Web History lets you look back in time, revisit the sites you've browsed, and search over the full text of pages you've seen. It's your slice of the web, at your fingertips."

Well done to Google, but there are still a number of open questions.

1. Why can't we export this data as Attention.xml and APML?
2. Is there a way to turn this feature off while still using the Toolbar?
   
3. What is the endgame of all this data collection - how is it used (both for our benefit and theirs)
   
4. Are they trying to help create an Attention Economy, or are they trying to dominate it?

Ultimately though, if Google releases these sorts of features in an open and transparent way (answering each of the questions above) they could help users and the industry better understand the value of Attention Data.

If not, it could cause unnecessary fear and doubt and break their own rules about avoiding the dark side.

Sam Sethi discusses "My Google Attention"

In his recent post Sam Sethi discusses Attention Metadata and Google's growing desire to capture (for an unknown purpose?) your Attention Data while engaged with their products and services.

He kindly points out that Touchstone is also working in the field of Attention and predicts that we're going to hear more on the issue in the coming months and years.

Read his article 'Is Google building the Attention Economy"

He ends with:

What we do, where we go, what we say i.e. our attention will be tracked online, if we are to continue using free web services and in exchange the carrot is we will be further rewarded for our time and attention.

So Google you have got my attention but don’t be evil!

I, personally, would like some personal leverage rather than hoping that big companies 'won’t be evil'.

I think that leverage can come in the form of a feature he requests from Google.

If I could then share my attention metadata with other people I trust (whitelist) I could then let them learn about websites or feeds that I have been using. This is a similar idea to Dave Winer’s OPML share service and once again the basis of a discovery engine as opposed to search.

Well Sam we have invented just such a format called APML. Check it out and perhaps ask Google to support it.

As Seth Goldstein says, your attention is very valuable and you should have ownership over it and clear understanding of how it's being used.

As everyone knows, we too (here at Touchstone) can collect your Attention Data. Unlike other vendors, however, we can do it across applications and services to give you a broader, vendor neutral result -- and we let you see/control/keep/share the results.