

Early alpha version hacked - what do you think? - help fellow hackers - iamyoohoo

Hi,<p>We've just launched an early alpha version of our product.<p>http://www.endorseyou.com<p>The long term goal is to create an online trust and credibility network for people to find other credible people. This is just the very first cut of where we could go. So you could potentially ask for referrals for a home improvement person that your trust network has used or check references for someone who applied to a job position at your company or endorse your caterer who did a great job at your event using this tool.<p>Thoughts to help fellow hackers - what do you like or dislike about the idea, implementation and what would you add to this to make something like this useful? How do you find other credible people in real life?<p>Thank you.
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shawndrost
This site isn't very useful unless a lot of people are using it. [1]
Furthermore, the only people with any real motivation to input data are those
that want to game the system. How about this as an alternative version 1: a
facebook or linkedin app that lets you request a recommendation for a caterer,
mechanic, whatever, from your friends. That's useful immediately, and you can
aggregate responses.

Also, the people giving me the thumbs-up were beggin for a hurtin.

[1] The current version of your site doesn't care about location, which makes
it look less empty but be less useful.

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gensym
The first question that comes to mind when I see the front page is, "Why would
I use this instead of LinkedIn recommendations? Especially since I don't want
to convince everyone I know to switch from LinkedIn, etc.".

It seems like your answer is that trust is weighted by how much you trust
someone.

However, that isn't clear without some digging. Certainly, that point is more
important than the "thumbs-up" people, yet the "thumbs-up" people are more
visible (and annoying).

A couple other questions -

\- I'd still need to be sold on getting people I know to sign up - maybe
there's some way to piggyback off of existing networks?

\- Just because I trust someone in one area doesn't mean I trust them in
others. For instance, someone may be a fantastic lawyer, but just because they
recommend a developer does not mean I think they're competent to rate
developers.

\- The tagline, "Your credibility, online" strikes me as a little much. For
one thing, the idea of trusting my credibility to a single site gives me the
heebie-jeebies. Fortunately, that's not the case, credibility cannot exist in
a single database, and thinking about that drives home that the tagline may be
overstating it a bit.

\- I really dig that the registration form is minimal, but it makes me wonder
how to distinguish multiple people with the same name.

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iamyoohoo
Great suggestions. Thanks.

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icky
Are trust ratings just raw sums, or can they be based on how much people _you_
trust have rated someone?

For instance, I don't care about how many sockpuppet accounts have endorsed
someone, I only care about how they're rated by people I know or trust (or, to
a lesser extent, how they're rated by "friends-of-a-friend", though there
should be a more than linear decay between each degree of separation.

Also, having publicly (or even privately!) viewable trust ratings can skew the
ratings. I might have a true opinion of someone that's better or worse than
what I'm willing to publicly announce (we can't all be Zed Shaw ;-). Viewable
ratings also create the problem that I might feel pressured to rate someone
well so that they won't retaliate against me: let's call this the ebay effect
;-).

There also remains the problem of proving that a given account actually
belongs to the person named.

You need to have a posted, credible policy that you won't tamper with or sell
ratings, or reveal private information (such as how I _really_ think of so-
and-so).

A system like this could be great, but you have to take into account every
possible way it could be gamed or cracked, and build in solid defenses against
all of them from the very start.

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iamyoohoo
You got it right, the idea is to make these trust ratings based on how much
people you trust have rated someone. In the alpha version it does not go that
far yet, that's the idea though.

I agree that there has to be a good way to prevent how the system can be
gamed. We are building those into our design, just haven't had the time to
totally add it into the front yet.

Good suggestions. Thanks.

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DocSavage
I would suggest adding another radio button (e.g. "Company"), inactive if
necessary, so there isn't just one People button. Looks a little weird with
just one button.

The system looks useful. Not sure if I'd want people to contact me after
searching for programmers. You could make sure that the example tag search
("E.g.: Chinese food caterer") returns an entry or that it fits with your
targeted audience ("E.g.: PHP programmer").

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marketer
Seems similar to the original intent of rapleaf.com, which is a platform for
building reputation. They are actually changing their business model because
their product didn't gain any traction. You might want to check that site out,
and see if you can differentiate.

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iamyoohoo
Thanks. Rapleaf was based on rating buyers and sellers and based on email
reputation. It did not provide much insight into the rating.

EndorseYou is more like Yelp for people in our mind if we were to come up with
an analogy.

