The Currency of Trust

Craig Newmark of Craig's list makes an interesting prediction about the future of social networking saying "By the end of this decade, power and influence will shift largely to those people with the best reputations and trust networks, from people with money and nominal power." Building a digital reputation is about increasing your expertise, advancing your professionalism and building your credibility.

I've read it a thousand times, if you want to be an expert at something, then practice for 10,000 hours. Well what if there was a way to track your hours of expertise to establish your skill level and credibility? Here's an example. If someone asks me a question about training for a triathalon or becoming a Cat 3 bike racer how do they know I have the expertise to give good advice? Well I use Garmin Connect to record all my work out activities and they can see I biked 600 miles last month, ran 75 and swam 12. They can also use goodreads to see all the training books I've read and see the interaction I've had with members about how the concepts worked for me. Now what if there was a way to rate my experience level or gain credibility points that make my advice more worthwhile?

Last year Y-combinator hosted Cory Doctorow where he explained his idea for something called Whuffie bucks. It's a system for recording and building individual trust. It tracks your interaction with social networks and feedback from your contacts so you can develop your reputation. When I think about my personal career I believe that LinkedIn recommendations have value but I think there's a huge opportunity to create a system for developing an online reputation.