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Take Control of the Attention Economy

Ted Cohn · January 7, 2021 ·

Imagine you’re an emerging influencer. You started on Instagram and have a good following on YouTube, but your new TikTok account is exploding—amassing hundreds of thousands of followers in just a few weeks.

Things are finally happening after years of effort, and now you’re thinking about quitting that day job to become a full-time creator.

But insta-fame is overwhelming. You’re inundated with questions from fans and propositions from strangers pitching services you’re not sure you need.

You get calls from unknown numbers, so you let them go to voicemail.

Because who has time for a robocall pitch that’s probably a scam anyway? You’ve got Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube comments to attend to. You’ve got videos, pics, and posts to craft, DMs to answer, collaborators to interact with, brands to pitch, merch to design, friends to text, family to actually talk to and yes, you still have that pesky job to go to.

Attention is a finite resource.

Welcome to the attention economy, where the most valuable tradeable asset is your mental focus. Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, and more—all compete for your attention so that they can monetize it with ads.

As The Social Dilemma illustrates, these companies have followed the How to Build Habit-Forming Products playbook using the secrets of behavioral science to monopolize and monetize your precious attention in a world of infinite information.

By design, social media platforms are as addictive as slot machines.

Influencers rising to prominence on social media quickly learned that whoever garnered the most attention attracted sponsors willing to pay to access their audiences. The bigger the audience, the bigger the paychecks, requiring more attention to grow.

This isn’t surprising, since even babies know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, AKA food, milk, love, and attention, which means survival. Giving and getting attention are basic human needs.

Using these platforms, anyone can attract attention as an influencer, and many people have. According to data from Tensor Social, there are more than 127 million Instagram, TikTok and YouTube accounts with over 1,000 followers, 83% of those in the 1K-500K follower range.

Millions of influencers are creating content contributing to what the World Economic Forum estimates will be 463 exabytes of data daily by 2025, the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day!

Yet the average American has only five leisure hours a day to spare.

The world is awash in content, but the supply of human attention hasn’t kept pace. Google notes there’s no evidence that individual human attention capacity is growing. Nor has the population grown as fast as the number of brands has.

Time is money, make it count.

If attention is scarce and the demand for it high, then maybe it’s time to flip the script. What if that phone call from an unknown number came with a price tag?

Imagine you’re that influencer finishing up your latest TikTok post. You get a random call, and on the screen it says, Mason Storm, Acme Talent has paid $20 for 15 minutes of your time. Would you take the call? What if you ignored it, but he came back offering $30 or more?

Your attention is your asset, and you alone choose where to focus it.

Do you scroll through Facebook, bombarded by ads along the way? Do you finish posting your TikTok video? Or do you take the $20 call because you’ve been getting messages from talent managers, but at least this guy is offering something tangible for your time, so why not talk to him?

Why would Mason Storm pay to talk to an emerging influencer?

Because in this scenario, he has several brand deals in mind and knows that if he signs you on now, he’ll earn 15-20% on future fees and can easily earn back his initial investment.

Meanwhile, Mason’s competitors continue to message you via outreach, but you’re off the market.

What if you’re a fan of an influencer who teaches fitness?

You love her videos and always comment, but she does a move that feels awkward when you try it, so you want to ask her what you’re doing wrong on a video call. With a video call of course you can show her exactly what you’re doing. How do you cut through the noise to reach her?

She doesn’t know you, she gets hundreds of DMs a day, and even if you could find her phone number, would she answer and participate in a random video call?

Worldwide every day, people need to connect with other people they don’t personally know for specific reasons—to get advice from experts, to make a connection that advances a career, to seek encouragement, or to offer opportunities likely of interest to highly qualified prospects.

In a world of scarce attention amidst information overload, it makes sense to buy access offering money in exchange for high-value connections. Especially now, in the age of Covid, where people are stuck at home anyway and video calls have become the norm.

Will people pay for time?

People already do! The consulting industry is $130 billion strong, and individuals have been paying each other for time since money was invented.

At Wildeye, we’re taking it further, creating a shortcut to help people cut to the front of the line, where anyone can connect to anyone, for the right price—starting with influencers on the rise.

We recently conducted a product research study and found that people are willing to spend money for the right connection. Younger buyers were more willing to spend lower amounts for the thrill of speaking to somebody famous, while older buyers were more skeptical but willing to spend higher amounts to get exactly what they needed.

For those selling their expertise, the money was important, but they also liked the idea of sharing knowledge, helping others, and increasing engagement with their audiences.

And for those in particularly high demand, we envision auctions for the limited time they make available to the public, letting the market decide the final price.

Both buyers and sellers liked the safety, privacy, and dispute resolution services that a marketplace for brokered video calls provides.

AI will determine your price.

Your browsing history, clicks, likes, comments, and shares—everything you do online is already tracked for the purpose of presenting you with ads that lead to purchase.

Programmatic ad networks powered by artificial intelligence now bring highly targeted ads down to small niche publishers, while influencer sponsorships move down to the nano-level.

Ad spend is shifting toward influencers because we tend to trust their recommendations more than we do generic ads on a social media network.

This trend will probably continue as we see the rapidly growing $10 billion influencer marketing industry expand in the coming years.

What’s the next step?

We see a future with more intelligent AI following your actions online, making better assumptions about your intentions, bringing better, more highly-targeted offers to you, and in certain use cases, paying you to watch a video, fill out a form or take a phone call.

The evolution of the attention economy is the democratization of advertising.

Yes, you will still be served ads, and yes, influencers will still ply you with recommendations, but in certain high-probability situations, advertisers may choose to cut out the middleman and pay you directly for your attention.

This is the segue to the connection economy.

Connection is where the magic happens.

Attention is hollow, fleeting. It feels good for a moment but may or may not lead to a sale. Asynchronous likes and comments only go so far.

People crave meaningful human connection via real conversations that lead to understanding. This is also where agreements, inspiration, and transactions live.

If attention is scarce, then true connection is even more scarce—especially now in our ADD swipe culture of gamified, FOMO-driven, perpetual distraction.

Connection is more likely to lead to transactions, which is why the robo callers keep calling. They know if they get through, some number of people will buy whatever they’re selling.

That’s the power of connection, requiring an investment of both time and money.

But at some point, it’s all too much. You can’t give attention to everything that crosses your path, and you can’t connect with everyone who wants to connect with you.

Of course, you reserve free time for family and friends, but for all those people you don’t know who want to pick your brain or pitch their product, why not put a price on your time?

This law of reciprocity kicks in when someone offers you money for something, and you accept. They’ve given something to you, so you feel compelled to return value in return, even if that’s just listening to what they have to say with an open mind in the allotted time.

This is the vision we’re bringing to life.

We’re creating a marketplace to serve 3.8 billion social media users worldwide (potential buyers) and 127 million influencers (potential sellers).

Your phone rings. Lexi Smythe wants to discuss your career path, offering you $30 for 15 minutes. Would you take the call?

What Makes Someone Influential?

Khalil Doheny · December 14, 2020 ·

Influence can’t be achieved through intimidation or coercion. It comes from within—from a person’s ability to inspire and motivate those around them.

Becoming an influential leader has nothing to do with titles and everything to do with gaining the admiration, confidence, and trust of those around you. It’s about how you engage with others and how your vision rallies people to you.

It may seem hard to nail down what exactly allows one person to hold sway over others, but these certain five traits are unique to these natural leaders.

1) Knowledgeable

Influence doesn’t happen by magic. It comes through intentional behavior and practices.

Influential people move through life with purpose—conscious of their words, wisdom, and how others perceive them. They focus on ways to create the impact they wish to have and how to achieve the outcomes they aim for.

“Someone who is influential,” said Diane Cohn, Wildeye CMO, “has a body of knowledge about a topic which they share with others, becoming a credible resource for that information. But it also has to be a topic that people care about.”

If you’re a makeup artist, it’s all about the makeup, the colors, how you apply them and all the different effects you can create. Or if your niche is personal finance, you are putting out content on how to increase earnings, save money or invest for retirement.

Audiences connect to those who know their craft and freely share valuable information.

2) Trustworthy

Influence must be earned through integrity and honesty.

Influential people recognize that others will hold them up as an example to emulate. They know that their reputations are the foundation of their ability to influence and lead, understanding that they must be trusted if they hope to inspire others to adopt their ideas and support their vision.

“Being knowledgeable about something is important” said Diane, “but to truly influence others, you also have to be authentic, credible and worthy of someone’s trust.”

People are always evaluating—why should they listen to one person versus another?

If you’re an influencer, whether they read your writing, watch your videos or look at your pictures, people are making snap judgements. Does what you’re saying make sense? Do they relate to you? Can they trust you?

If the answer is yes, they will follow.

3) Relatable

Being relatable means that audiences connect to an influencer through shared similarities. It’s a key quality that helps create trust, which melts people’s defenses and opens them to new ideas.

Influential people tend to relate to others in deep and meaningful ways, often seeking to bring people together to help them feel connected.

They typically have a purpose that others are attracted to, they add value to the groups they collaborate with, and they strive to have a positive impact on those around them.

Relatability also requires that they be somewhat open about their emotions. When they share their difficulties and how they cope, this often leads to an increase in likeability and influence.

As an influencer, people perceive you as being real when you admit to weaknesses or flaws.

4) Adaptable

Monitoring and adapting to new trends is key to staying relevant as an influencer.

Leveraging the right trends can help you reach new customers, make more sales, or capture a new audience, but the challenge is how to adapt while staying true to your brand.

The ability to evolve is critical for maintaining influential status, and there’s no better example of this than Madonna, the Queen of Pop. She’s the master of reinvention, evolving from True Blue’s yearning Marilyn Monroe figure to the scintillating sinner of Like A Prayer.

These days every top pop star approaches each album like a separate world with a distinct visual identity. It’s now very common to hear music fans referring to things like Ariana Grande’s Sweetener phase or The 1975’s Music for Car era. This has been Madonna’s game since 1979.

As an evolving influencer, you may lose some fans along the way, but you’ll retain the ride-or-die cohort and likely gain new ones if you’ve built a strong base and continue to create.

“I think a true influential person is someone who is able to reinvent themselves as needed and bring their audience with them so that it’s authentic,” said Diane. “The influencer is being who they need to be, but it’s still relevant and valuable for the audience.”

If people suddenly seem confused about your brand or what it represents, perhaps you pivoted too hard. Reach out to your fans to see where your message got lost and see if you can bring them around before too much damage is done.

But above all, stay true to your heart and walk your own path.

5) The Hustle Factor

The hustle factor is the consistency of putting content out there and building credibility.

Diane said, “You have to build your knowledge in whatever your niche is.”

You have to learn all the things you need to learn, but that’s not enough. You can’t just know a lot of things. You have to go through the effort and the time and commitment of putting that information out into the public realm.

Whether it’s creating a YouTube channel or an Instagram account, you have to be putting the content out there to share your knowledge.

With the majority of information on the internet being practically free, it is your job to figure out a game plan and figure out how to set yourself apart, but also make it entertaining.

The cliché saying of “success doesn’t happen overnight” couldn’t be more spot on when you want to be a person of influence.

“Consistency is what everybody says. Every influential person who’s built an audience has consistently worked for that every day of every week for years,” said Diane.

To build an audience, you have to keep creating.

Connecting Influencers to Their Fans

As an influencer, staying engaged and connected with fans is critical for continued success.

Billions of followers want to connect with millions of influencers, but they can’t because the influencers are inundated by too many requests.

Millions of influencers are looking for new ways to monetize. They want to connect with fans but want to do it conveniently and safely on their own terms.

Wildeye founders Diane and Ted Cohn created BidToTalk as a marketplace where you can bid or pay for private video calls with influencers.

Our service allows the influencer to get paid for their valuable time.

“If you want to ask an influencer a specific question that’s particular to your own circumstances, you don’t have to put it in a public comment. Our marketplace gives you the opportunity to ask the one person you’ve been following for years for their input on a private call,” said Diane.

Influencers, athletes, professionals, and personalities, or anyone who wants to share their knowledge will soon be able to auction specific time slots for video calls to the highest bidder, or they can charge a fixed fee to speak to fans during the time slots they publish on our platform.

Our technology handles search, bidding, scheduling, payment processing, security, and video calls. Wildeye’s primary purpose is to connect you with those you admire for potentially life-changing conversations.

Invest in Wildeye to Help Spark More Meaningful Conversations

Everyone deserves a meaningful conversation that sticks with them for the rest of their lives. We created Wildeye to bring those conversations straight to your screen, but we need your help.

Funding the future is one of the most important things you can do to help fuel entrepreneurship and advance humanity. Such contributions promote an ever-evolving world by supporting innovations that have the potential to be revolutionary.

Investing in a startup like Wildeye means that you can be part of something bigger, and it allows you to participate more fully in the journey ahead, and own a piece of the American Dream.

We are excited to be live on Wefunder so YOU can be a part of our journey.

Explore our campaign page, ask questions, and together we can make magical moments happen via meaningful conversation.

We’re Wildeye, and This is Our Story

Khalil Doheny · November 27, 2020 ·

We live busy lives in today’s age, trying to strike a balance between work, school, hobbies, self-care, and more.

Often, we allow social connections to fall by the wayside. But connecting with others is more important than you might think. Social connection can lower anxiety and depression, help us regulate our emotions, lead to higher self-esteem and empathy, and improve our immune systems. By neglecting our need to connect, we put our health at risk.

This last year, we’ve seen massive social media influencer growth illustrating the need for human connection, entertainment, and education since people can’t go out like they used to.

Influencers inspire and motivate us to change something in our lives or to rethink our behavior. They also draw our attention to issues that demand attention, like ocean pollution, online bullying, voter fraud, and gender rights.

Some teach us life skills or hacks, like how to take care of our skin, create the perfect morning routine, or make a Thanksgiving meal in 30 minutes or less.

Influencers can also use their reach to address critical issues in politics or business, network with other influential people. And sometimes—a quick chat with one of our favorite influencers is all we might need to give us the insight or inspiration we need.

What if we told you there was a way of connecting fans, clients, influencers, and professionals for private one-on-one video calls?

Our founders, Ted and Diane Cohn, created Wildeye to connect everyday people with the world’s influencers and professionals, creating access for people who might not otherwise connect.

By sharing our story with you, we hope to inspire you to join our community and become a part of a growing movement, connecting influencers with fans worldwide.

Making Human Connections a Reality

The inspiration for Wildeye came from both founders. Ted had been looking to start a more conventional human connection marketplace before Covid.

“As an introvert, working as a software developer for 16 years remotely on and off, sometimes that got lonely,” said Ted. He was looking for ways to increase his social capital and connect with mentors to help level-up his career.

Simultaneously his wife, Diane, a budding YouTuber, noticed that many creators had hundreds of fans asking questions that went unanswered, with some offering to pay to speak with them.

“One of my viewers asked to pay to speak with me about a topic of my expertise, real estate,” said Diane.

They had a lightbulb moment, and Wildeye’s BidToTalk was born.

BidToTalk is a marketplace where you can bid or pay for private video calls with influencers.

Influencers, athletes, professionals, and personalities can auction specific time slots for video calls to the highest bidder, or they can charge a fixed fee to speak to fans during the time slots they publish on our platform. Our technology handles search, bidding, scheduling, payment processing, security, and video calls.

Our primary purpose is to connect you with those you admire for potentially life-changing conversations.

It’s a win-win for everyone. Influencers get a new stream of income to help support their work, and you get the incredible opportunity to speak directly to those who inspire you.

At Wildeye We’re a Team of Visionaries and Inventors

Our founding team has more than 50 years of combined experience in software development and digital marketing for some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. We have the knowledge, connections, and drive to deliver a superior product, experience, and results.

Ted Cohn, CEO, CTO and founder has 30+ years of experience in consumer software development and worked for Steve Jobs at NeXT. He’s developed cutting-edge products for numerous companies, including Apple, Barnes & Noble, Ugobe, and has been awarded ten patents.

Diane Cohn, President, CMO, and Founder has 20+ years of digital marketing experience for luxury brands, including corporate communications at Apple and digital strategy at Chase International. She’s also an emerging YouTube influencer with over 800,000 views.

Both have a proven track record of achievement in developing consumer products, sales, hiring, vision, and ability to execute. Together they bring core competencies in technology, marketing, and leadership to our team.

To Our Future

There are over 3.8 billion social media users worldwide, including 38 million influencers, so the market opportunity is vast.

By focusing initially on influencers, we expect to leverage the network effect as they promote availability to their thousands to millions of followers with custom BidToTalk links that bring buyers to our marketplace.

Our plan is to develop and grow a thriving, global marketplace that helps people discover and connect for life-changing conversations, promoted via digital marketing campaigns, podcasts, video, content marketing and advertising.

We’ve already begun a direct influencer outreach program working with an established influencer marketing and talent agency to help kickstart marketplace growth.

Your Chance to Participate

Help us connect millions of busy influencers to billions of fans looking for inspiration.

We are currently running an equity crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder, and we’re excited to be able to offer a platform facilitating meaningful conversations that change lives.

Invest on Wefunder Today