Joanna DarlingtonKatherine Weller

Kathryn Robinson

Whilst researching 2.0 the aspect we have chosen to specialise in is attention economy and free labour. For those of you who do not remember I am Katherine Weller, this is Kathryn Robinson and this is Joanna Darlington. We will outline the key features of attention economy and free labour and expand on how they influence our lives today.

Attention economy treats human intelligence as a scarce resource, using our interests to provide the best advertising for our needs.

What is attention economy? Attention economy treats human intelligence as a scarce resource, using our interests to provide the best advertising for our needs. So this means that companies take our information and adapt it predominantly through advertising to benefit them as a company and our demands.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/attention_economy_overview.php

This shows the processes of attention economy and how both consumers and companies are linked to provide the best service possible. As you can see there are two contributors to this process, the consumer’s attention and the services of the company. These are combined to benefit the economy as a whole.

Advertising.

Examples of attention economy. Social networking sites use the information we choose to give (such as interests, date of birth, etc) to provide advertising that is relevant for to an individual. Examples are sites such as myspace and facebook. This is a screen grab from the advertising that facebook offers, assuming these products would meet my needs.

TV advertising

Another type of attention economy could be TV advertising. An example of this could be that during family programmes such as the x factor, adverts for family meals are shown, whereas later at night, adverts for alcohol that would appeal to an older age group could be shown. This also depends as to the channel programmes are being viewed on and the way they are funded.

Free labour is using our everyday habits to benefit companies. This is not necessarily a conscious act, yet users and companies can benefit from the information given.

Moving on to Free labour. Free labour is using our everyday habits to benefit companies. This is not necessarily a conscious act, yet users and companies can benefit from the information given. This means that the time we spend within media can be transformed into a profitable source for companies.

An example of free labour is Wikipedia. This uses free labour by allowing us to input more data in order to help their company provide a service. After reading an article, we can chose to edit or add more information. Therefore we are working for free. The example on the slide shows how we could edit the information provided about spongebob.

Websites such as amazon use free labour in several different ways. They let customers write reviews of products, in order to promote their website. This give a sense of security to others wishing to purchase specific items as we know that other people gave them a positive review. Also, they take information of what other customers are viewing to advertise different products, as seen on the slide.

Amazon then gives information of customer buying trends to further promote related products. This example, when searching for a digital camera, gave options to look at memory cards, camera cases and alternate digital cameras pop up. Other websites that do this include argos, dorothy perkins and comet.

Ebay provides a similar service to amazon with comments and feedback, input from the public in order for the company to benefit. These reviews are not just for the product, but for the seller too. The example shown on the slide, shows bench outlets’ overall customer review. As the public makes up the buyers and the sellers, ebay receives free labour because we do most of the work for them.

Cinema adverts

Cinema adverts are also used to promote similar films either within the same genre, age range, or certification. For example when I went to see ‘the death and life of Charlie St. Cloud’, Harry Potter was advertised because it was of the same age certification of the feature film.

Hairdressers

Although hairdressers are paid for the job they do, they are also involved in free labour as they have to make the customers feel comfortable in the environment they are in by including them in a conversation and empathising with the customers feelings. Therefore although they are only being paid for one job, without undertaking the social aspects of hairdressing they would no longer have customers.

Virtual call centres

With advances in new media, more people are working from home, therefore blurring the divide between home and work life. This also affects employees rights as it would be hard for there to be a workers union within a dispersed company. An example of this is virtual call centres where many people can work from home in the comfort and safety of their living room.

In conclusion we can see that attention economy and free labour play an important role in our everyday life. Although we don’t always realise it our every move is being manipulated to encourage an economic output. The examples that we have shown are profitable organisations therefore proving that free labour and attention economy will always have a place in society.

Any questions?