Cori Schlegel on OPML and Attention Data

Cori Schlegel has some some interesting comments on the recent Alex Barnett/Kevin Burton podcast (MP3, 42 MB) on attention data formats and various related issues:

While being able to focus our individual lenses based on our OPML data will offer us so much more than we have now, with the explosive growth of new content available and soon to be available, I would argue that that granularity of attention will fairly swiftly prove to be inadequate. Almost every publisher’s content that I read contains a fair amount of information that I don’t care about, and I care deeply about content that’s not in my current reading list, and OPML as it stands now fails to capture those distinctions...

..a utility like the AttentionRecorder will come in handy. Sure we can’t filter on that level of data yet, but I’m confident that it or something like it will become available to us in the future.

Even setting that aside, my comments were more towards the inadequacy of OPML as a format for the attention data that I think we’ll want, not towards the current content of OPML as it stands, because I agree wholeheartedly with Alex - there’s plenty to be mined there for now, and I want tools that use it. I am glad to see, however, that the folks at AttentionTrust agree that there’s more that can be done with the format, because IMHO their format is the closest to right, right now.

That's encouraging to hear, but I want to reiterate that we're not trying to promote the format currently used by our Attention Recorder as a standard; we're agnostic on the best format for attention data. If the format that's being used for our Recorder can be of further use, that's great, but our primary goals are to educate people about attention data and empower them to exert greater control over their own data, while building support for the fundamental principle that user control of data will be essential if the attention economy is to succeed fully.