Information overload has become the typical issue of anyone using the web to access or search for nuggets of information. Both the search and the subscription paradigms lead to countless results, posts, articles that one needs to sift through to extract relevant facts. Using Attention metadata (blog subscriptions, document hyperlinks, URLs and keywords entered by a web user,…) is one of the mechanisms infrastructure providers will use to elevate relevant pieces of information – as demonstrated today by the first generation of meme trackers (like Memeorandum, TailRank,…).

Memestreams should be a part of this discussion.

Our host for the March session of the Search SIG is one of the pioneers of the Attention movement: Steve Gillmor, as the co-founder of the AttentionTrust and co-creator of the original Attention.xml specification with Technorati’s Dave Sifry, has evangelized the growing importance of Attention metadata over the past two years. He is also the host of the famous podcasting series: Gillmor Gang, Gillmor Daily and AttentionTech.

Does Memestreams do anything like Attention.xml? It seems like it should be very feasible.

Information overload has become the typical issue of anyone using the web to access or search for nuggets of information. Both the search and the subscription paradigms lead to countless results, posts, articles that one needs to sift through to extract relevant facts. Using Attention metadata (blog subscriptions, document hyperlinks, URLs and keywords entered by a web user,…) is one of the mechanisms infrastructure providers will use to elevate relevant pieces of information – as demonstrated today by the first generation of meme trackers (like Memeorandum, TailRank,…).

This sounds like an interesting conference. I am going to follow that happens with the Attention stuff. This is data we could use, and provide. We've already been trying to approach the situation in a similar manor since 2001.

Also check out this Steve Gillmore article about Attention.