More on Trust...

So there's more to the story with this whole Trusted Network thing.

While I do think it is oddly comforting to see a visual display of our RIA cronies on our profile pages (Flick's profile pic is my favorite), and I think aesthetically, the profile pages look much nicer now - having visually pleasing profiles is not the end game here.

And while I think it is helpful for folks browsing the site to get a feel for whether other people trust the author of a particular review, the expected benefits of this feature go far beyond that.

Here's the vision:

I think that our hand-picked Trusted Networks (those that you trust) can evolve into the foundation of a personalized recommendation system for every one of us.

Imagine if you could filter out the ratings and reviews of every hit and run poster with an agenda on RIA, and only see the recommendations of those who are connected to you via your personal trusted network, or via the trusted network of those you trust.

If this site had this functionality, you would not just be getting the unsolicited opinions of the entire universe of RateItAll reviewers - you would be getting the aggregated recommendations of only those folks who are connected to you by links of trust. This network could be extended 2 degrees out, three degrees, four degrees out, etc. - to whatever degree that you felt comfortable with and that provided sufficient data.

That's what we're shooting for here. By identifying posters that you trust, you are linking yourselves not just with those individuals, but also with the networks of those individuals. In technical terms, for every additional node on your personal network, the power of that network grows exponentially.

So what does that mean? I think in terms of RateItAll, it means that the more we are able to organize ourselves into trusted networks, the more value our community can provide in generating relevant, helpful, personalized recommendations of things like movies, TV shows, products, restaurants, travel destinations, music - and even more subjective things like politicians, blogs, and Web sites.

As many of the most prolific RIA users trust each other, the networked value of this system is not apparent yet. But I think you can see signs of its power. I've noticed several relatively unknown users showing up as trusting some RateItAll heavyweights. Clicking through to the profile pages of those unknown users shows that in some cases, that trust is returned. What can we deduce from this? One very plausible conclusion is that these little known RIA users have a real life / offline connection to the RIA heavyweight. In my mind, this makes the value of their opinions that much more significant, and makes me trust their reviews a bit more.

This is network theory in action. And I think maybe the coolest aspect of it, is that each of us controls our own Trusted Network. Only we can decide who we trust, and because RateItAll is a free service open to anyone, we have the power to pick and choose from everyone we know - online or offline - to build a powerful, customized network that we can learn from.

Stay tuned, as this is a work in process.... as always, comments are welcome.