welcome to the attention economy

As some of my friends know already, for the past two years the BF and I have been working on an online start-up idea on the side. (OK, so he's been the one mainly working on it, but I've been there all along, playing the much-needed role of sounding board, devil's advocate and chief thesaurus operator.) It's a concept called Meople, and it has to do with getting paid for your time and attention. I'll save a longer explanation for the site itself: Meople.net.

Now, something strange has started to happen. Though our little foundling community hasn't officially launched yet, tech folks are starting to talk about it. Yesterday it was mentioned in a blog posting on Attention Trust. Today, the M-word comes up again on a blog called User Generated Data. Granted, we're still months away from a mention in the WSJ, but this is a pretty big honking deal, especially considering that the site's only got, oh, thirty-some odd Attention Stores online now. (Lingo, I know; read the site for details.)

In the meanwhile, I just added a couple of products to my own Meople Attention Store. Send me a MeMail, pay me $15 and I'll draw your dog.

It's just that easy. Did that grab your attention?

(For anyone who's in NYC and wants to know what the heck an "Attention Economy" is, come to the Meople Meetup on Aug. 2. Or you can read the Meople blog, The Attention Store.)