There is a saying “on the internet no ones knows if you are a dog“, in other words you might be a trustworthy person however because of the anonymous nature of the internet it is very hard for others to judge.
In daily transactions, both business and personal, your reputation is a key component. In business it is very hard to know if the other person you are dealing with is genuine or not, let alone across the internet.
Blogs are helping but they have there limits as well, everyone is not going to get a blog. Even if they do you are not going to have enough time to read them all and participate in a conversation with the writer to determine where they stand. eBay have partially solved this problem with their feedback system. However this only works within the eBay ecosystem, what about all of the other ecommerce sites?
The recruitment process relies on reputation throughout. As an employer the reputation of the agency you go through is important. As a recruiter known the reputation of a candidate is very important, but so is the reputation of people referring other potential candidates to you.
Enter RapLeaf, an independent reputation system. RapLeaf allows you to build reputations on both a business and personal level based on feedback. One of the best features of the system is the person you are providing feedback on does not have to be a member of the service. Feedback is linked to either a phone number or email address, perfectly suited to both online and traditional transactions.
One of the founders was recently interviewed on the G’Day World podcast, and provides a good introduction to the service.
I have registered to give it a try, you can see my reputation here, or have a look on my side bar.
Michael Specht 