Monday, October 3, 2011

Can I Trust You Really?: The Reputation Currency

From Shareable.net
By Albert Cañigueral
09.28.11

During the Age of Separation we shielded ourselves from strangers by reducing all access to goods and services to money. No personal economic relationships are important because we can always "pay someone else to do it" wrote Charles Eisenstein in the book Sacred Economics.

In contrast, the Age of Reunion that we are entering is all about sharing: sharing with friends, sharing with coworkers, sharing with neighbors, sharing with complete strangers, sharing for free, sharing with a payment, etc. but sharing is not without its risks as the Airbnb incidents exposed. Can I trust you?

“For pretty much anything related to sharing resources, thinking through trust and reputation is a critical first step —particularly as it relates to user acquisition. If these companies don’t make their communities feel safe, they won’t have communities anymore.” -

Craig Shapiro, Collaborative Lab

"Reputation capital is becoming so important that it will act as a secondary currency, one that claims "you can trust me". It is shaping up as the cornerstone of the 21st-century economy […] It's the ancient power of word-of-mouth meeting the modern forces of the networked world." – Rachel Botsman

Read more here.

No comments:

Post a Comment