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I worked for a company that would have been a target client for a product like this. In the end, we didn't use one of the many similar solutions (legit.co, trus
by mvid 12y ago
I worked for a company that would have been a target client for a product like this. In the end, we didn't use one of the many similar solutions (legit.co, trustcloud, scaffold, peertrust, project trust, truly, etc..) for two reasons:
* We didn't want to give our information away. It was a nonstarter. Either to protect it from being used by competitors or because of security concerns of giving private user information to a third party.
* Each site and community has different levels of trust, and actions have different meanings. Whether someone commits sexual harassment on OkCupid doesn't matter when you are trying to buy their toaster on eBay. I am much more concerned about someones behavior when they are living in my house, not so much when they are giving me a ride in their car within the city at noon.
It would be nice if everyone didn't have to build their own trust system, but any competent company will. A general solution will either be too general to be useful, or require too much private information to be allowable.
The only way I can see a standalone product like this occurring is if a well established company like AirBnB of Facebook would build it on their existing (valuable) dataset and and guarantee data privacy.
- avree 12y agoI worked for this same company, and wholeheartedly agree. This type of product is a non-starter. Companies like Legit.co, Trustcloud, and Scaffold have all tried this and failed. Furthermore, there's really not much value in the scale you're giving. It's scary. If someone is 95% trustworthy, should I trust them? Or is that last 5% the axe murderer portion? Overall, I can't see any target market for this. Companies would build their own, and consumers don't want to take complicated 3rd party trust into their own hands.
- somerandomness 12y agoThanks for the feedback. In this case, the target clients are regular users, not companies. Craigslist doesn't need to share any of their data for this to be useful to Craigslist users. "Whether someone commits sexual harassment on OkCupid doesn't matter when you are trying to buy their toaster on eBay." You can choose to ignore this information, but for some users it may be a relevant signal. I personally would rather buy a toaster off of non-sexual-harassers. Also, perhaps there will be less harassment if there were consequences, i.e. a worse online reputation.
- jessaustin 12y agoIf data isn't coming from service providers, does that mean it's all coming from user reviews? ISTM that e.g. Yelp (there are others too) has been working through the inherent difficulties for some time, and they haven't exactly got it figured out yet. What if one of the first million reviews/ratings leads to a lawsuit? Does this all just go away?