How Kin Turns the Tables on the ‘Attention Economy’

“Attention is a resource; a person has only so much of it…. Lately, our self-appointed disruptors have opened up a new frontier of capitalism, complete with its own frontier ethic: To boldly dig up and monetize every bit of private head space by appropriating our collective attention.”

–Matthew B. Crawford

Since author Matthew B. Crawford first published those words in 2015, the epidemic of tech-powered “attention appropriation” has only grown more pronounced.

As an excellent Hacker Noon post recently outlined, today’s internet giants attract vast amounts of users and keep them around for the longest periods possible, at the most frequent return rates. Achieving “stickiness” and long time-on-site (or time-on-app) metrics translates directly into revenue: The more time users spend inside an ad-driven app, the more income that app can attract from advertisers.

Plenty of internet users and tech innovators are frustrated with this state of affairs, but few can do much about it. Social media commands about two hours of our time every day, and most apps have few options (aside from advertising) for monetization.

The scenario pits innovation against us: Since keeping our collective interest keeps their businesses alive, apps invent ever-more creative — and psychologically manipulative — tactics for cultivating our attention. As those tactics (aka, “new features”) hook us into spending more time inside an app, we can either accept that our attention is the app’s asset, or give up the app altogether.

At Kin, we think innovation shouldn’t be used to suck every ounce of attention out of our heads. New features shouldn’t just draw us into spending more time in an app; they should deliver value to users in exchange for their time.

Innovation should empower us with new tools and techniques to create value and opportunity in our actual lives — not just turn our digital selves into bottomless sources of data.

That’s why we’re building an ecosystem in which attention is respected as an economic engine of the digital world. Our model is designed to provide value to people in exchange for their ideas, their time, and the digital “energy” they exert inside an app or digital service. And to help us attract new partners to the Kin Ecosystem, we’re building digital products that will help us show others how it works.

Our ‘Kinit’ beta app is the case example: As the first iteration of a standalone Kin app, Kinit will provide a closed group of ~1000 beta testers with the opportunity to complete tasks and receive Kin as an earned reward for their time and attention. After a few completed tasks, our beta testers will be able to spend their earned Kin on a product or service offer of their choosing.

The approach will allow us to “transact” on attention in a transparent way: Users will know how much time it takes to complete each task — and the amount of Kin they’ll receive for completing it — from the moment they open the app.

It’s all in service to creating a new way to monetize apps for a fairer online future for all of us — users and app developers alike.

As we cultivate insights into how users interact with tasks and offers, we can open our ecosystem up to partners that are looking for innovative ways to reward their users for their ideas and input (or to create new ways for them to reward each other, using Kin as a token for peer-to-peer value exchange). Over time, we see these efforts leading to new options — aside from advertising — for app monetization.

We’ll share more information on the Kinit beta app, and the insights we generate from it, in the months to come. (Note: We’re accepting only U.S. college students as testers in the closed beta phase. If you’d like to refer potential users to us, please let us know in the comments.)

But we’re already excited about changing the way our collective attention is harnessed and used by digital services providers. It’s our goal to open up a newer, better frontier of capitalism in which the ethics of attention are fairly considered… and in which the resource of attention is fairly compensated.