Introducing Attensa and the RSS network

It seems Gnomedex is going to be full of interesting announcements, with the one from the you software guys certainly poised to generate much interest.

Having just launched a new venture-capital backed company, Attensa, they're not only setting new standars for Outlook integrated RSS readers, but are also rolling out the first phase of a comprehensive RSS network, utilizing Attention.xml.

Here's the explanation in short:

"By intelligently analyzing information about RSS articles and how readers are interacting with the articles, the Attensa RSS network can deliver more relevant, timely information individuals on the devices they choose and businesses can take advantage of RSS technology to streamline communication with employees, partners and customers.
Every day, millions of pieces of metadata are being generated by RSS news feeds from Websites and blogs. RSS metadata can include information about an RSS news feed article such as the title, author and date of creation. It can also include information about how users are interacting with the information by tracking which specific articles are being read and which articles are being ignored or deleted."

More information can be found in their official press release.

I'm missing a clear list of benefits and a clear description of how the network works (Why the advanced tech small-businesses almost never hire copywriters?), but I am seeing some real marketing possibilities here, such as:

a] RSS metrics for marketers/publishers
b] Content/message/ad targeting capabilities
c] Business intelligence capabilities
d] Content filtering

Attensa?s network infrastructure is a distinct, competitive advantage for the company.

While Attensa gives businesses, marketers and publishers the ability to track and analyze massive amounts of attention data in discrete communities of publisher-subscribers through Attensa RSS Analytics - they are also creating a macro-level network that spans multiple disparate communities, sites, businesses and software applications.

When attention data is captured and analyzed on that scale, it creates rich, actionable behavioral insights yield innumerable benefits that can be monetized many times over.

Posted by: Scott Quick at July 1, 2005 7:01 AM

I'd be very interested to learn more about 1) what exactly is the metadata they are capturing, 2) if they can provide even a prototype of what their behavior reports would look like (especially if they could generate behavior reports for even an anonymous individual.) Finally, (3) how do they propose to handle the privacy question?

Posted by: Bob Scheier at July 13, 2005 2:48 AM