Reputation Isn't Portable
Brad has a good post on our Union Square Ventures blog about reputations.
Almost exactly one year ago, I posted about reputation services and made the point that someone should syndicate reputation data and extend it.
Well it turns out, according to Brad's post which builds on Mary Hodder's comments at our Sessions event, that reputation isn't very portable.
Go read Brad's post for the whole insight.
Couldn't agree more & was waiting for some-one to squash this central trust service crap. Mary's example proves that reputation is contextual, relevant only within the community in which it's generated.
This is where peer production & web2 clash as illustrated by Marc Pincus' comments (also at the sessions) about needing to organize web2 presence under a single uber-service. Marc thinks that all the duplicated info & functionality on the web is a waste. Because he's from the web2 camp that has to build it.
From a user's perspective though, we're used to spreading our interests across multiple communities & contexts. That's how paricipating in "communities" in the real-world work - you have a different reputation at work, home, on the golf-course or in the pub - and they're seldom transferable.
As for the "attention trust" - hopefully this meme will see an end to that sham too. - give me a break - "to "pay" or "get" attention" is a VERB ... it's not a NOUN ... what I paid attention to in the past is only useful to people trying to get my attention in the future - and there are enough of those already - I don't need a service to tell me what I did pay attention to and it will never know why I did (i.e. context)!
Posted by: David Gibbons | November 10, 2005 at 03:09 PM
Hi Fred,
I posted on this earlier today, disagreeing with Mary's sentiments. I think I'll go add a link to your article in there too.
http://mashable.com/2005/11/11/actually-mary-reputations-are-portable/
Posted by: Pete Cashmore | November 11, 2005 at 11:11 AM