Craig's Lemonade

Outlook 12 and RSS: Attensa thoughts

Outlook 12 is really quite nice and this will no doubt be the first of many missives on the subject as it is central to our success at Attensa. I saw an in-depth demo and spoke with some Microsoft folks at Syndicate in SF a few weeks ago. At Attensa we could not be more thrilled as Outlook 12 will bring RSS awareness to the masses. And yes, we think that this is a good thing. A great thing. P.S. The calendar features and revamped user interface is really nice in look, feel, and capabilities. I can't wait!

I posted the following paragraph as a comment on Marc Orchant's blog on the subject. He has some strong opinions, and lots of links to related stories so check it out.

There is a lot of room before during and after Outlook 12. I can't speak for the others, but at Attensa, we are eagerly anticipating the pervasive use of Outlook 12 for our business model to hockey stick. We are focused on massively scaleable, realtime application of attention data to improve the RSS user experience. Further, we intend to make available a faceless app that contains our engine to make Outlook 12 that much better on its own and when connected to our servers - whether behind the firewall for businesses and for anyone on our own servers. Basic RSS readers will no doubt be commoditized, and we agree ISVs will need to innovate not just deliver the obvious.

Further...

Ourt first implementation of AttentionStream technology has been applied to synchonization. It is our assessment that the slow, manual, subscription level, user expereience associated with sync solutions of today are not sufficient for power users or business. Attensa's AttentionStreams deliver a rich, instantaneous, and automatic capability between Outlook, Web, and Mobile (more later) that is unrivaled by ISVs and will be compatible with the MSFT sync engine (though it's solution is only subscription level.) Lastly we will expose our APIs for 3rd parties soon and a subset of these APIs will be compatible with the NG API. At least that is the plan for now. If synchonization is important to Marc, he should love what we're up to because we don't think the state of the art is too swift.

The Microsoft Program Manager has a new blog and posted on Outlook 12 as it relates to RSS that is worth looking over. The MSFT Outlook feature set is a god send and we can't wait to take advantage of the sea change coming in 2007 when "the enterprise" STARTS deploying to SOME of their users. But more on that another time.

Yahoo buys del.icio.us, legitimizes tagging

So, I get back to my desk this eve and what do I learn? Yahoo buys upstart del.icio.us, and legitimizes tagging overnight!!! Syndicate SF is around the corner and this will no doubt be one of the biggest developments deserving of focused discussion. The tagging session will no doubt see a considerable increase in participants. Charlene Li (as usual) has spot-on observations about this development and her post includes several interesting links including for new tagging companies Wink and Raw Sugar.

Our Attensa for Outlook (which goes 1.0 beta on Monday) is not only compatible with del.icio.us, but our Firefox and IE toolbars are (near as we can tell) the best user interface out there for viewing existing, and creating new, delicious compatible tags. Further, we have built a virtual superset of the delicious tags engine at Attensa and see far more interesting opportunities in the enterprise with tagging than is being speculated now with consumers in so called “social networks.” Check it out, only Attensa for Outlook and our toolbars embrace del.icio.us tags! And for now it’s free!

At Syndicate we are also announcing our “AttentionStream” technology and social bookmarking “tags” are an exciting and useful invention. Yahoo has now helped legitimize their existence and should rapidly increase their adoption among mere mortals. Tags are an important component central to our vision at Attensa of utilizing massive amounts of transient metadata for the betterment of the user experience in real-time. Stay tuned....

Attensa Series B funding by RSS Investors

Today at Attensa we announced our Series B financing led by RSS Investors of Cambridge, MA. Here is the press release that went out today, an interview on kbcafe with me and one with Jim Moore of RSS Investors. Also, here is a Red Herring story out this morning too.

Having been through this process several times with prior companies such as Now Software, Extensis, and Pump Networks as founder and as CEO – I can honestly say it never gets any easier to get a round of financing done. It is moments like this that I recall one of my favorites quotes, this one from Calvin Coolidge who said “…persistence and determination alone are omnipotent...” That said, with all the congratulatory email and phone calls I have been receiving this morning – and the media questions - I know more than anyone that we are still in the starting blocks and looking at one busy, challenging, and exhilarating 2006.

We will be at Syndicate in San Francisco next week beginning December 12, so please look us up if you are there, as we will be demonstrating Attensa for Outlook 1.0, Attensa Online (AJAX RSS Reader), and maybe even Attensa Mobile!

RSS in Japan, Ad data from Pheedo

I just ran across a post from Pheedo's weblog. Apparently adoption of RSS is growing even faster in Japan than the US. Also on Pheedo's blog is some data they have pulled from their own network. Exciting stuff. More data confirming that well targeted ads "pulled" via RSS feeds vs. "pushed" via spam have much higher CTRs. Obvious i suppose but exciting nonetheless. Check out Pheedo's blog for more interesting data on the rapid growth and interest in RSS advertising.

At Attensa what is really exciting to us is how much more accepted and useful advertising will be for USERS once attention streams are leveraged to deliver newfound relevance in internet advertising. In the meantime, just simple Google AdSense and Pheedo insertions are an exciting development. I think Jupiter is wrong about the impact on e-mail, i think it will be considerable as consumers and marketers use RSS to build a one-to-one, secure communications channel....at the expense of e-mail.

The need for "www.attention.org"

The organization doesn’t exist yet but here at Attensa we have concluded after several brainstorming sessions, discussions with partners, presentations to investors, and demonstrations of our technology ‑ that strategically we need an “attention.org” to exist. While Eric Hayes (a founder and VP R&D) has joined Technorati’s brain trust in helping to define attention.xml, this is only a small part of the equation. As an industry we need consumers and businesses to “get it.” Steve Gillmor can write until he is blue in the face but it wont make a difference if he is the only one on the soap box! I beleive we need an industry commitment not only to the technology but to the evangelism and education of all constituents.

Consumers, partners, media and more need to feel comfortable about the anonymous and privacy protected nature of attention data (as it is presently being contemplated) – and how it can enrich their lives! Attensa believes RSS, as beautiful a thing as it is, will ultimately enable – no force – users to drink from the proverbial firehose. Longhorn's integration of RSS will essentially guarantee it! Segue Attensa...Less is more is our corporate battle cry and we are utilizing attention data to intelligently improve relevance of information for all users. In fact, in the future, we intend to license our engine that facilitates this to third party aggregators.

While here at Attensa we are working with massive amounts of transient meta data or “attention streams” - we are committed to maintaining compatibility with the attention.xml spec once it is fully baked. Please contact me or Attensa bizdev if you or your company is interested in helping us champion this technology.

P.S. Somebody apparently wants $4K for the domain so we’ll have to come up with an alternative name too

Blog right from Outlook to TypePad, Blogger, LiveJournal

Attensa for Outlook .97 was posted today and while there are performance and other fixes the coolest part of the release is the ability to directly create and send blog posts to TypePad, Blogger, and LiveJournal. You can also “re-publish” your blogs too! This is not your ordinary "publish" from Outlook, so check it out - you can even insert WYSIWYG MSFT word created tables! Check out the configuration options too.

Structured Blogs and Attention Data...they need each other

PubSub is leading the cause for structured blogs and has some nice simple examples for book and music reviews replete with links to buy on Amazon. At Attensa we have been looking closely at structured data types, beyond even those of blog origin, and hope that standards such of these catch on (at a minimum) with mainstream consumers. Obviously internet retailers will also benefit if such structured blogging is accepted…and at Attensa we believe the results can be dramatically improved for all participants.

Enter “attention streams”

Structured blogs in our view might be just half the equation, as it will be sophisticated (and anonymous) utilization of attention data that will make examples such as these truly useful to consumers AND the businesses that will ultimately benefit. Charlene Li’s blog has several other consumer level ideas that are particularly conducive to the structured blog approach. John Batelle goes even further discussing the implications on search and tagging.

All of these ideas though are predominantly consumer-centric. While interesting and useful, we feel the real opportunity is most certainly in the enterprise including CRM and throughout the supply chain. Imagine structured blogs from everything from RFPs to Expense Management to Annual Reviews to Applications for Employment. Consumers and retailers will no doubt benefit from structured blogs but it will be miniscule compared to the potential in the enterprise. That’s my (Attensa’s) take anyway.

"pay" attention bloggers

A very interesting storm is brewing stemming from Tom Foremski’s Silicon Valley Watcher article on Technorati. Doc Searls jumped in on his weblog and a debate has ensued. There are several interesting points of view on his blog and of course links to folks with some very interesting perspectives on the ethics or at least the appropriateness of creating and/or mining the data of blogger activity. One thing all sides agree on for sure is that nobody likes it when a "pitch" happens on a panel that is supposed to be educational. I dont see what the big deal is personally, but, I'm IN the software business so go figure.

At Attensa, blogger activity is only a part of the “attention data” mix for us as our planned solutions more broadly target RSS – and not just the RSS of bloggers. The enterprise is discovering RSS in a big way and on the heels of Microsoft’s announcements in the space, IT departments are looking more closely than ever at RSS as an enabling communications and collaboration technology everywhere (employees, partners, and customers.) We’ve so far only announced our reader, server strategy, and a few associated and obvious extensions – but the real value for users in the long run will be through the intelligent dissection and application of attention data, or as we say at Attensa - attention streams. "Pay" attention, it's going to get interesting.

(Anonymous) Attention Data

It looks like we have a lot of missionary work on our hands communicating the importance of attention data. While Steve Gillmor has been championing attention.xml for well over a year now, and our own co-founder Eric Hayes has joined the Technorati guys as an author of the spec – most folks (even the blogworld digerati) have no clue as to how useful and important attention data will become. Even Microsoft was dissing it at Gnomedex. Some think there might be privacy concerns, and there probably will be, as we have been talking about this a lot lately at Attensa.

Whether attention data, attention.xml, or “attention streams” as we call them here at Attensa, I think we may need to insert “anonymous” more aggressively into the positioning. The attention.xml wiki Q&A covers this but perhaps it should be moved up into the actual overall positioning/messaging for attention.xml. “Anonymous Attention Data” may sound redundant to those in the know, but it will likely be important to help communicate to the inevitable voices of privacy concern. The truth is that plain simple cookies are ultimately probably more "invasive" (and less useful) to unsuspecting users than well executed use of attention streams will be…at least by what you will see coming from Attensa anyway!

Lastly, the "All Things RSS" blog by Scott Sharp introducing some interesting opportunities a la VersiSign's business model that could be enabled nicely with attention data. The post "Beyond Attention.XML: A Contract to Ensure Privacy" begins an interesting discussion surrounding privacy concerns and business opportunity...