Rationale

What is Attention Share?

In Sentidex the price of a position in an Attention Market is its Attention Share.

Attention is zero-sum

Attention is finite. There are only so many hours in a day, so many conversations happening at once, so many things a person can follow. One thing gaining attention means others are losing it.

Attention Share is a position's fraction of that finite pool at a given moment. Every position's share is relative to the others competing for the same audience. When one rises, the rest fall.

Metrics are proxies

Traditional metrics don't measure attention, they measure proxies for it. Twitter mentions measure engagement on one platform. Search volume measures search behaviour. Media coverage measures editorial decisions. Each correlates somewhat with attention but is not attention.

Every alternative requires a curator

Using these metrics to estimate attention requires someone to decide what counts. Which platforms to include, how to weight engagement versus reach, how to adjust for bots, how to update the methodology as new platforms emerge.

That decision is a single point of bias and control. Curated metrics are also gameable: you can buy followers, seed press coverage, and optimise for search ranking. Any measure derived from platform activity can be moved by actors who understand how the algorithm works.

A market price has no curator. It reflects whatever participants collectively make it, through capital being put at risk. No entity can move a price without buying or selling. No one can manufacture consensus without others taking the other side.

The prediction market analogy

Prediction markets use the same structure to measure something different: the probability of a future event. They work because no oracle or external data feed is required. The crowd buys and sells, prices shift with every trade, and the result is the best available aggregator of distributed belief.

Sentidex applies the same mechanism to a present-tense question. Instead of "what is the probability this event occurs?", the question is "what share of attention does this command right now?" The structure is identical. The claim is the same. Market price is the most credible aggregate available.

A continuous signal

Prediction markets close when an outcome is decided. Sentidex markets do not. There is no event to settle against and no expiry date. The market price is a continuous, live signal of relative Attention Share, updated with every trade.