Online Reputations

slashdot had this article today. Discussing a feature on mindjack by Nicholas Carroll, entitled Spinning the Web – The Realities of Online Reputation Management. It’s a very interesting article discussing the birth of online reputations, from email and Usenet postings, to the birth of online shops and e-commerce. It talks about the essential difference between selling face to face (or over the telephone) and having to get your pitch across in words on the web. Worth a read.
One of the slashdotters, Ryo Chijiiwa, posted a link to his own story, Reputation Economy and the Internet, in which he discusses how reputation acts as a substitute for monetary worth, and also how the system compares to market economies. Again, well worth a read.