This 2.0 site lets you check folks' reputations

Filed under: Business

This 2.0 site lets you check folks' reputations

by Ted Wallingford Sep 5th 2007

In urban slang, a rap sheet is defined as a history of criminal behavior. But online, a rap leaf is something entirely different. RapLeaf lets you keep tabs on your reputation and contribute to the online reputation of others. Ever use eBay to rate a seller or buyer? It's kind of like that, except no auctions.

Like eBay, RapLeaf's rating system includes a positive percentage and an overall rating number. The overall rating purports to include factors from social networking sites such as MySpace and is representative of more than just other RapLeaf user's feedback. There appears to be no upper-limit to this figure.

So how useful is this, considering we already have an accurate credit rating system and personal criminal history already available in an online search? We like the RapLeaf idea because it's somewhat self-monitoring like any good social site, and because it's independent of any single commerce site. RapLeaf is nearly about to release their API, too. So commerce site operators will be able to plug in the reputation tools easily. Now why didn't the stodgy old-schoolers at the Better Business Bureau think of something like this?

Tags: business, rapleaf, reputation, web 2.0, Web2.0

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

James said 12:24PM on 9-05-2007

I was wondering when somebody would get around to this -- if you ever read the novel/short story collection "Accelerando!" (free e-book download, if you care), this sorta-kinda replaces money in the "new" economy. The idea is that your reputation makes you more or less important to people on the internet (or whatever comes next), and the more you contribute ideas to the common good, the better your reputation is. I can't explain it as well as the book, but it's an intriguing concept and would be really cool to see it take off.

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