Reputation

if i told you things i did before
told you how i used to be
would you go along with someone like me

if you knew my story word for word
had all of my history
would you go along with someone like me

-Young Folks, Peter, Bjorn, and John

The mainstreaming of blogging and social community participation in combination with search engines optimized to turn up people data  is creating an online environment where we can effectively assess many people's stories word for word from multiple sources. The result: the significant conversation around reputation on the internet will trend away from community specific reputation local to sites like eBay and Slashdot - and towards a broader notion of online reputation that encompasses all of the different facets of a persons identity that are now scanable/searchable.

Note: Hat tip to Bill Gurley for promulgating the start your post off with lyrics model.

For the curious, Young Folks video:

Comments

[Dan]

Excellent point - As the trend on the web moves to distributed identities (i.e. blogs, social networks, etc), it will be important to have reputation systems that can grasp all that information. It will also be harder for people to have a quantifiable reputation - reputation will be built around your network and recommendations.

Cheers!

-Dan