Bezos working on his whuffie

Mon, 09 Jun 2003 01:15:00 -0400
/misc

Jeff Bezos is looking a bit cooler after he bigged up Cory Doctorow on NPR for his (Creative Commons licenced) book and particularly it’s reputation system - Whuffie. More interesting commentary on Whuffie can be over a AKMA’s Random Thoughts - in Raph Levian’s comment.

In fact, there are systems which attempt to measure Whuffie. I did my PhD research on “trust metrics,” which are basically the same thing. Google’s PageRank is also a decent model of Whuffie in the web world.

Saying “AKMA is a good person” is nice, but doesn’t help identify the source or credibility of that opinion. By contrast, “AKMA has lots of Whuffie” clearly identifies the opinion as coming from someone who is very up to date in the online world.

Actually my real motivation for this post is that it gives an excuse to mention Cory’s collaborative work-in-progress with Charlie Stross. Unwirer is both:

an exploration of the value of wireless networking in a USA with a regulated internet

an insight into the craft of collaborative short story writing