Attention Operating System

Steve Gillmor enters Gnomedex stage left. He announces that Root.net and Gesture Bank are teaming up to announce the Attention Operating System. “We’re building on the four attention principals: it translates to: we own our data, we’re the people who create it. If you’re in it, you can contribute."

Canter asks Gillmor about money and his response is centered around affinity groups. “The driver of attention economy is affinity groups. The blogosphere is an affinity group. Within this group, there are specific interests, i.e., windsurfing, politics, etc. There’s an opportunity within those groups to do cross-selling in a way that Amazon is currently doing.”

Gillmor continues, “If I have to choose between two clouds, one that is open and efficient or a closed club that isn't, I want to go to the open club rather than the Microsoft hairball."

He then talks about the value of an alternative like Gmail, where he can pull his information out of a cloud, and not be tethered to Office. "I’m not getting this for free. Not really. People often think that the attention trust is about to coax the majors in.

Frankly, the longer they push back on this, its of huge marketing value to us. Their attitude is to lock people in. People don’t want to be locked in – they want to be free, to choose and to own their data. Our goal is to create a gesture economy with a small number of people. We don’t have to convince the big crowds to play along. We’re beyond that.”

Someone from the audience asks, “you don’t believe in linking, right?” Says Gillmor, “are you referring to my anti-linking crusade? Yes, links are dead. And, Office and Notes are dead. Links are being gamed. The page view model is being replaced. It’s going to be about the relationship between the user and the cloud. And affinity groups.

We have a lot of clout in this environment -- the blogosphere, where its based on ameritocracy, not the old concept of what the mainstream media is about. The information is looking for us now rather than us looking for information. The user controls the dialogue, not big companies.”

The audience claps. Chris Pirillo reaffirms: “The users are in charge. We always have been.”

Tag: Gnomedex
Tag: Gnomedex 2006
Tag: Steve Gillmor