Eric Norlin in his post Pushing back on Google’s identity silo identifies the biggest barrier to an attention economy.
the fundamental problem at the heart of all of this “identity 2.0” stuff that I’ve been talking about: the existing silos (Google, Yahoo!, eBay, etc.) have *no* immediate business reason for opening their identity silos (at least, not that they can see).
Today all the big players have no incentive to open up. The best incentive to open their identity silos, will be the fear of being isolated from a broader economy. We have to create an economy around their silos and that economy requires a reliable and reputable identity mechanism, all economies do. Without an Internet scale identity system, the attention economy will fall pray to the same gaming that we see with links, comments and Pay Per Click advertising.
Identity enables Property, Mobility, Economy and Transparency. An Internet scale identity system will not guarantee the success of the attention economy. The lack of an Internet scale identity system will ensure the failure of the attention economy.
Link Summary:
Eric Norlin’s RSS Feed via Digital ID World
Pushing back on Google’s identity silo
Tom The Architect 