Attention grabber

News

HP Labs' researchers have created a tool that could dramatically increase the attention paid to every item on a media organisation’s internet homepage.

In today's multi media world, consumers can turn to any number of sources for news - TV, newspapers, or the internet.

News editors are being pressured to maximise the number of people reading, hearing or viewing the material they offer.

Bernardo Huberman, HP Labs' senior fellow and director of HP’s Social Computing Lab, and colleague Fang Wu, think that they have come up with a way to help.

They have created a tool that could dramatically increase the attention paid to every item on a media organisation’s internet homepage.

Called i-catcher, it dynamically charts the attention paid to each piece of online content on a particular page - from news articles to videos and banner ads. It can suggest where and for how long any individual item should be offered on that page to maximise the total number of views that each item receives.

Behind i-catcher, said Huberman, is a complex algorithm that balances novelty with popularity. 'We all attend to things online because they are new or popular. Eventually attention fades, and we attend to other things that are new or popular.'

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