Reputation - Its More Important Than Ever But What Exactly Is it?

Do you know what whuffie is? Do you have any? Can you spare some? Did you know that it came from a book and that there is a whole book about it? The whole idea is reputation-based currency. Instead of money, your ability to move through society is based on an aggregate score of how people regard you and your actions - the other catch is that this score - essentially your community-determined worth - is instantly and always visible to others.

So when we are talking about implementing social media for learning within organizations, we can see the value of having something like whuffie right? I mean it would help us determine at a glance, how much we initially trust sources or data. It could also help re-structure entire organizations' hierarchies of expertise by making the basis of your 'organizational wealth'  - how much you are helping the organization.

Dan Gillmor had a recent article on this and about how we could maybe begin to create an aggregate model by pulling in your eBay rating and maybe your ratings from other social network sites that you may be involved in. Got me thinking about how we could think about creating this kind of currency within organizations to help spur the use of social media...could we create a universal standard for this as a currency and those standards could just be applied to groups at an organization's discretion...and the REALLY important question...what could you spend your whuffie on?

Comments

[mark oehlert]

Brent - the population contributing to that review would be GREATLY expanded wouldn't it?

Tony - I think I like this idea but are you saying that people w/out sufficient whuffie, would not be able to access expertise? How do you deal with whuffie-based poverty? :-)

[Tony Karrer]

"what could you spend your whuffie on?" - you spend it accessing expertise.

[Brent Schlenker]

From the enterprise viewpoint. Whuffie would simply replace the old 360 review model for determining ranking and rating at end of year reviews. So you wouldn't "spend" your whuffie, but that value would translate into dollars or status perks within the enterprise.