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Posts Tagged ‘reputation’

IIW XIII: Connect.me and the social vouch-a-thon

October 19th, 2011
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Connect.me is a socially verified reputation system in which people vouch for other people using customizable tags. This is called social vouching. The whole system is based on it, so someone has to vouch for another person to join the network. The purpose of this session was to help a group of people get their initial vouch and learn how to use this new network.

It works in conjunction with/on top of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you follow or are connected to someone in one of those networks, they show up in your network as someone you can offer a “vouch” for. For example, I vouched for Drummond with tags “digital identity” and “trust frameworks,” which are both areas that he has done considerable work in for years. I also vouched for Kaliya (one of the organizers of this event) with tags “identity” and “digital identity” because she’s known widely as “identity woman.”

People can refer to others on this site by their reputation, as represented by their tags (what people know them for). One of the tags I’m known for is “early adopter.”

Much of this session was working through some of the user interface glitches and idiosyncracies. This was a great opportunity to see how things work with more people doing the testing. Once we got past some of the early work-in-progress, it was clear that there is a good networking resource in the making.

For anyone at IIW who wants to start using the network, you can either: 1) have anyone that is already using it — and that you have a link to on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn – vouch for you (and then you’ll be sent a custom invitation link), or if you’re not at IIW, 2) go to http://connect.me, sign up, and then either give the username you registered to Drummond (or send it to him at drummond — at — connect — dot — me ) and he will vouch for you as an early adopter to get you into the beta.

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Project Neck Pain

March 11th, 2011
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In order to have the capabilities we might want in the future, a lot of tools, pathways, and “plumbing” need to be created first. Phil Windley and his company Kynetx is one of the tool builders working to create some of the connecting parts. They made a great video called Project Neck Pain illustrating how their tool helps connect our needs. Check out how smoothly this works:

Coaching moment: Two of the assumptions this video: 1) that our guy in the video has a Personal Data Store, and 2) it’s based on the existence of curated references (like the list of doctors) that you might “subscribe” to. Some of these lists may be compiled from the resources of your friends’ networks (a la Facebook, but user-controlled). Others will need to be created, and will be used as people find them valuable. Do you have resources in your network that you’d speak positively (or negatively) about? Would you share that with the world?

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Your Network, Your Reputation

August 3rd, 2009
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With the rapid growth and use of social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and many others, there’s a growing interest by service providers, marketers, and hosting companies in mapping this fertile ground. Your network (online and in person) is where your reputation resides. What does your network say about you?

What to Measure?

What to Measure?

IBM (a company with more than 38,000 patents) published a paper called Social Ties and Their Relevance to Churn in Mobile Telecom Networks in which the authors point out that it’s not the individuals that are important. It’s their relationships. From the abstract, “Exploring the nature and strength of these ties can help understand the structure and dynamics of social networks and explain real-world phenomena, ranging from organizational efficiency to the spread of information and disease.”

The bottom line here is that if enough of your friends don’t like something, there’s a tipping point where people start changing to something else. In the case of mobile phones, for instance, lots of people will get a new phone when their provider becomes a problem, and their friends agree about that problem.

There are two parts to this issue. First: whether you are a leader or a follower. Marketers and advertisers really care about leaders because they will influence their friends to do (or not do) something. Second: the mapping process can get rather personal. The IBM paper above looks at the “aggregate” or group behavior of a network. However, tools can be tuned or created to be very specific about your network: whom you see, how often, and who else they’re connected to.

In the case of politics where transparency is informative, you can see nice, detailed visualizations of networks at work around TARP (the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or “bank bailout” money), federal funding earmarks, or health care. But what about when it gets personal?

Coaching moment: Records of your relationships and your network are everywhere: in your social networks, in your email, on your phone, records of bridge tolls, and more. The mapping technology doesn’t yet work in real-time, but it’ll happen. By itself, this isn’t the major concern for me. The really big problem lies in the fact that we don’t have rules for how this information can or should be used.

Our corporations do not have the same concerns, priorities, or moral compass that people do. Corporations are motivated by what the company can do that is profitable and makes their shareholders happy. There are no laws or other forms of guidance about what proper social behavior is, largely because as a society or a culture, we’ve never talked about it.

I suggest now is a good time to start talking. With your friends. What do you want in an Information Policy Platform?

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Reputation Management

April 17th, 2009
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We have many ways to view our identity. One way that we are known is by our reputation. Our friends and colleagues know who we are. They know us from our acts and activities. They know generally what kind of person we are. For example, we might be known as a kind or loving person, or maybe a jerk, a know-it-all, or a scoundrel.

smileFor a business, the employees are the first line of the company’s reputation. Sometimes employees are not the most diplomatic representatives. In one recently publicized case, a video posted to YouTube by two playful employees caused a public relations nightmare for the company (and later regrets by the ex-employees).

It’s worth noting that while one event can do damage, it’s not the entire picture. Our real reputation is made up of what we do and say over time, what we are consistent about.

Coaching moment: There’s a great lifehacker article, The Importance of Monitoring Your Online Reputation, that talks about this:

These days, if you want to know more about someone, the first thing most of us do is Google them. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that monitoring your online reputation is extraordinarily important.

Go ahead and Google and Yahoo yourself, see what’s out there. Note how much is about someone whose name you share. What picture does this paint? Are you happy with it?

You can’t change the past, but you can change your future reputation. What will you do to paint a better picture of yourself?

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Social (Media) Memory

January 27th, 2009
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(Holy cats: 10 days since my last post. Where does the time go?)

A little while ago I had the distinct joy of talking with my friend Jean Russell when she was en route to Boston. I always come away from our conversations with a warm glow and lots to write about. Alas, I did not get my thinking into words fast enough to do justice to our conversation about social networks, and how we effectively (creatively) integrate and braid the threads, interests, and work of our lives with our friends, colleagues, and supportive strangers. I do remember that as she was arriving at her destination with time to spare, I was able to call another friend (hey Judy!) in Boston and hook them up. Each of them reported having a fascinating conversation; both reported that the timing was weird and interesting. That’s sometimes how networks work.

This taps into a post that Jean has today about becoming “sticky” in other people’s memory. Jean is a busy gal:

I “follow” abut 700 people on twitter, with about 1000 following me. At scale like this, the question I often am asked is, “How do you remember all those people?”

You know that anyone whose “network [is] made of hundreds of brilliant, interesting, inspiring, compassionate people” is a person to be reckoned with. Additionally, you know that getting a new job or new clients is often (at least partly) about who you know and word-of-mouth. It’s worth noting that your social network can help raise you up in times of need, and all boats rise with you (meaning others benefit too).

Coaching moment: Your reputation is part of who you are. Your social network is where your reputation resides. This doesn’t mean that you need to use all of the social media tools available. Pick one or two and try them out. If they feel right, add a few friends and keep testing. If not, delete that account if you can, and start on a new service. You might wish to find a service where your friends are (like MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn) and start there, as your friends will be your early support for exploration and learning.

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