If you’ve attended the Demo Conference or follow the DemoLetter blog , you know that I am a huge advocate of the move to social computing. In very broad strokes, social computing puts people at the center of leveraged technology to enable individuals to collaborate, communicate and transact. Social computing takes many forms.
At its most basic, e-mail is social software. At its extreme, so-called social networks such as Friendster and LinkedIn depend on the interactions of members. Marketplaces such as eBay are fundamentally social. Blogs are a form of social media, and enable readers to become engaged with content, commenting on and referring to postings.
At the center of these software products and services are reputation systems, either explicit or implicit. A reputation system is a means of understanding who someone is and how that person behaves within the community. In e-mail, reputation systems are implicit: Do I know the sender? In eBay, the reputation is explicit: Buyers and sellers rate each other. Social networks use a blend of the two. In LinkedIn, you are known by the company you keep and what this company says about you – who you are connected to and how you are endorsed.
Each of these reputation systems is about instilling confidence in the social environment in which you engage. In time, reputation systems will extend to sites and services, as well. At The Wall Street Journal’s D Conference last month, Bill Gates talked about a forthcoming reputation network that would let users report on the legitimacy of Web sites to combat identity theft and phishing. Such a reputation system could be incorporated into browser or operating system technology, thereby using community-rated reputation as a proxy for security.
Reputation systems bring legitimacy and context to the interactions in social computing environments, and have allowed social software products and services to flourish. Imagine the possibilities if these services were perceived not as products themselves, but as component tools. Imagine if social networks – effectively search tools to identify personal and business relationships – were a part of business process software. That would be very powerful.
Likewise, imagine if reputation systems were not individual silos. Imagine if you did not start from scratch to build your reputation each time you joined a new community. Imagine if your reputation traveled with you, much as it does in the real world.
For that to happen, the technology industry needs to convene an initiative to create a reputation standard or protocol. There are whispers that such a movement is afoot, and hopefully consumers and businesses will wield their influence to demand such a standard and spur on the movement. A portable identity and reputation would enable more secure transactions, raise trust in interactive communities and reduce friction in e-commerce. When individuals can conduct business in a trusted environment, service-based social computing finally will become a reality.
Shipley is executive producer of The Demo Conferences, a biannual Network World-owned event that launches and showcases the newest emerging technology products and services. She can be reached at chris@demo.com.
