Unit 08: Identity, trust, reputation

Identity, trust, reputation, and the participatory web

Lecture: The participatory web. Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Photobucket, YouTube, WAYN, and other such Web 2.0 applications are essentially about connecting with others who have shared interests, sharing your views and your media with others, and having access to the views and media of others.

Why am I bringing together within a single unit the apparently unrelated concepts of, on the one hand, identity, trust and reputation, and on the other hand, media sharing and knowledge / information sharing? The discussion will in fact take us, even further, into fascinating, bewildering, and still largely uncharted territory that will also, via some side glances at ‘open content’ and digital rights, include speculative reflections on an emerging new information economy–an economy of ideas and ultimately of persuasion as much as of money. Read on …

From the moment you create an account on a web site or sign up for a web service you have at least a minimal public identity (though in most cases you’ll probably be urged to complete a more substantial profile that may include, for example, your age, your location, a brief “about me” statement, your interests, and–depending on the nature of the site or service–further information such as your favourite web pages, your musical tastes, your marital status, your job, and so on). It is around that identity, that self-defined hub, that you will create a network of friends (Facebook, MySpace, etc), post and share pictures (Flickr, Photobucket, etc), post and share videos (YouTube, Metacafe, etc), write a blog (Vox, MySpace, etc), write reviews (Amazon, etc), share your bookmarks (StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, etc), contribute your knowledge (Wikipedia, ShowMeDo, eHow, etc), tell the world what you’re doing (Facebook, Twitter, etc), give ratings of people or products (Amazon, eBay, YouTube, etc), or whatever others activities are associated with that site.

Amazon ratings

You are consequently contributing and sharing information and knowledge. And this is not simply overt information and knowledge such as you might publish in a blog or a review. Consider that when you upload and tag a picture or video, for example, the very fact of putting that media object into public view (even if you are not yourself the author) and the act of tagging that media object with this or that word rather than another is to augment and, in however small away, modify the sum of information and knowledge that is made accessible to others. Consider, further, that every rating of a product or of a review may cumulatively influence the thinking and the buying decisions by others.

Financial reward vs. ’soft’ recognition

What is it that motivates web users to write their Amazon reviews? to contribute to Wikipedia? It’s not the expectation of financial reward. Luis Suarez cites David Gurteen’s view that:

the system will continue to work without such rewards and incentives because these tools will eventually depend on the motivation and passion from some of the participants who would share what they know and their experiences with others at the exchange of nothing.

Although not referring specifically to informal voluntary participation (he’s in fact writing about knowledge management within a business context), his observations ring true for the social web:

recognition by reputation is something that will have much higher chance of surviving … those folks who would encourage this kind of reward system would be much more successful in encouraging folks to share their knowledge than those who would be part of a financial incentive programme. [My emphases]

But what has all this got to do with ‘design’?

[t.b.c.]

Unit content:

Connecting with others–the cybercommunity:

  • Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc, are the obvious and most well-known examples. We need not discuss these in depth; but it will be worth spending a few minutes looking at some Facebook applications to understand how a customised environment can support community and collaboration.
  • connecting with others through shared interests. Examples: StumbleUpon, OthersOnline, LinkedIn, etc
  • relationships in social networks. Examples: the FOAF (Friend-of-a-Friend) Project, XFN (XHTML Friends Network), etc

Reputation, trust, and personal identity:

  • buyer/seller ratings. Examples: on Amazon, eBay, etc
  • trust and reputation management. Examples: Venyo, Spock, etc
  • personal identity. Examples: OpenID, MyOpenID, claimID, NingID, etc

Designing user-centric knowledge structures for the read-write web:

Workshop: You will explore in greater depth some of the sites listed above; you will endeavour to understand the concepts of tagging, folksonomies, ontologies, faceted classification, etc. You will then continue working on your assignments.

References:

Chris Hutchison, “Why a bat may be a bird: the semantics of the ‘tag’“, Attica, 19 June 2007. Accessed at:
» http://chrishutchison.org/attica/2007/06/19/the-semantics-of-the-tag/

Tim Nash, ‘An Introduction to Reputation Management’. Accessed 12 December 2007 at:
» http://internetducttape.com/2007/04/10/an-introduction-to-reputation-management/

Luis Suarez, ‘Rewards for Knowledge Sharing – What Is the Deal?’, elsua: The Knowledge Management Blog. Accessed 12 December 2007 at:
» http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/km/elsua/archives/
rewards-for-knowledge-sharing-what-is-the-deal-7809

[BLOG] Online Reputation Management
» http://www.onlinerepmanagement.com

No Comments Yet

Leave a Comment


trackback address

You must log in to post a comment.