reputation matters!
Finally, after waaay too long, we have finally rolled out our public beta of our auction reputation management system. Its not as pretty and shiny as we would like, but we were really going for functionality in this release. We have had some great feedback from the initial users so far, but are thirsty for more.
Check out the beta at: http://beta.repatoo.com
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As if a serendipitous answer to my previous posts request I was emailed this article on Twitter’s use in building brands.
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In the process of slowly trying to build a company around the rather vague idea of reputation, we figured that we should secure as many of the social media, web 2.0-ish user accounts with the user name “Repatoo” as we possibly could. At least that way, we(and not someone with malicious intent) would be the ones screwing up our reputation…
We grabbed Skype, all the major IMs, gmail, hotmail, yahoo! mail, as well as twitter accounts. The one that I was th most skeptical about was twitter. Again, acquiring it was a defensive move, but then I began to ponder the actual business value of this short-message update format. I wrote a few tweets and watched them slowly roll down the main screen off into oblivion. Then, while performing my daily web search for all things Repatoo, I found a few of the tweets show up in Google’s search results. OK, so there is some value in it I guess. But, aside from maybe helping boost our organic search results, does it have any other intrinsic business value, or is it just an “in the moment” kind of thing?
I would love to hear some other people’s opinions as to how they have used these kinds of social media sites to help build their companies.
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While pondering the sources of data that would be used in creating an integrated, yet truly portable reputation widget, I find myself wondering who actually owns the feedback and comments associated with a particular merchant account. We contend that during the sign up at a given site, the user is effectively licensing their reputation to the exchange site and giving them the right to help maintain and alter it. This is, however, an implied non-exclusive license and in no way transfers ownership to the exchange site.
Often, this is not an issues since most of the more progressive sites have published generous and robust APIs to access the data. However, there are certain sites that (for a myriad of reasons) have yet to publish a way to directly access their data. Any Internet-savvy individual knows that not having an API is not a dead end… only a hurdle to overcome. The beauty of the Internet is that it is a self-arranging structured beast, meaning that there is some intelligence implied in the simplest of web sites. This structured intelligence can easily be transversed and its associated data extracted. A practice well known as “Screen Scraping.”
But, because it can be done programmatically does not make it ethically or legally sound. Or does it? Now I am no tort lawyers, but given that the user has granted this non-exclusive license for their reputation data to the exchange site, they have every right to collect, update and take the data with them at any time. Just as these exchange sites plainly state in their terms of service that they can terminate the relationship with the user for any reason (often confiscating any unsettled transactions and fees), there is a reciprocity in rights that allows the user to do the same. The problem is that while this is true, the users are rarely enabled to do so and are effectively locked into the agreement.
We are simply enabling users to control what is rightfully theirs and are ready to fight for the consumers right to make their reputation theirs to do with what they will.
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Wow, we took quite a break from updating the blog. We have been busy readying our site for its initial beta release. Stay tuned and we’ll let you know more as the planned release nears (we expect it to be by mid-December).