Trust in the Age of Twitter

by Venkat on January 30, 2009

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One of the most interesting problems around today is modeling trust levels in a relationship. The NY Times today has an article on the ettiquete of “unfriending” on Facebook for instance. Facebook has a binary 0/1 solution. eCommerce sites have a narrow, transactional rating model that works well enough in a limited context in the aggregate. Requests for references ask the blunt question: would you hire this person again? But all these approaches are blunt instruments. We need better approaches for the age of Twitter. Here’s my first stab. What do you think?

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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

otoburb January 30, 2009 at 9:58 am

This is very similar to a Clay Shirky discussion on how people need more granular methods of managing privacy online. The example he referred to was a friend who changed their status on Facebook and accidentally making the change public (“engaged” -> “single” status).

This is just one example on this spectrum definition. Funnily enough, I recently jumped from “Let’s keep in touch…” to “Hey, you in town?” via Twitter recently.

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