Seriosity Brings Virtual Currency to Email with Attent

Seriosity isn't a new firm, and their Attent app isn't new (though it is still in open beta). You still probably haven't heard of either the company or the product, because both are dealing in an entirely new type of application of virtual currency-- using it to place an economic value on end user's attention, particularly when answering huge amounts of email is part of that end user's daily job.

Attent is an application that is currently only compatible with Microsoft's Outlook program. Once installed, it gives you a weekly supply of Seriosity's virtual currency, the Serio. You don't spend Serios on virtual goods or gifts-- instead, you have the option of spending it when you send email. When you attach a Serio to an email, you're declaring that the email is important to you. The more Serios you attach, the more you want the recipient to pay attention to it. The idea is that, in a business environment, users could immediately sort vital from non-vital mail by tracking how many Serios were attached to each piece.

Email is perceived as free because it's easy to send and, in small amounts, easy to read. As Terra Nova's Edward Castronova points out, though, large amounts of unsorted email can become very costly in terms of the amount of time and attention it consumes from an end user. In a business, that time and attention is consumed while an end user is on the clock, which means the cost of email is passed onto the company.

"Something is wrong with email and a lot of responses have been tried without success, all of them focusing on new things the receiver could do to assess all this information. Of course, the problem is that the receiver is the person who is overwhelmed in the first place," writes Castronova. "It's like forcing the people whose river water is being polluted to do the cleaning at their own faucets, rather than putting the burden on the factory upstream to clean it at the source. The senders are the source of the problem; they are the ones who face a zero price for a thing that actually does have a cost. In this kind of problem, where prices are out of whack with actual costs, the best remedy is to make a price that reflects the real economic cost. In this way, the massive costs of email, once placed on the senders who create them, come into alignment with the benefits of email. You send an email when the benefit of sending it exceeds it price."

Castronova feels so strongly on this subject that he has essentially announced that he's adopting the Serio system wholesale to organize his inbox. Persons interested in contacting him via email probably won't receive replies unless they attach Serios to their mail. Castronova admits that this has caused some "negative reaction," but intends to go through with his plan anyway. "I need to order my Inbox or I will go crazy," writes Castronova.

The Serio is still very much an idea in development, right now becoming available to users at a fixed rate on a weekly basis. That the app is limited to compatibility with Outlook limits it from being adopted by businesses where alternative clients like Eudora or Thunderbird are the standard. It won't cycle into general use until it becomes somehow compatible with webmail like Gmail and Yahoo. Still, Castronova outlines a very clear need for something like the Serio. If the need is as immediate as he suggests, the Serio is destined to become a more prominent fixture of at least business email.

Speaking at the 2007 Virtual Goods Summit, Seriosity cofounder Bryan Reeves outlined the basic reason why Serios could and should work to help resolve the business email problem, if not in explicit terms. "About 50 yards away I have a lab that’s been interested in researching the points between fact and fiction and where the needle points in how people react. The needle points far closer to real than fiction for most purposes. . . . What happens when I can send you an email message with virtual currency attached? In a large fortune 100 company, you’ll open that email 12% faster than if I send no currency. If I send 20 units, you’ll open it 52% faster than if I send no currency. Virtual money changes real behavior."