B. Mann Consulting

Hey Mark Pincus, I agree with you ("that there is a need for a portable reputation system that can enable non-ebay p2p transactions"). You didn't link to anything by Auren Hoffman who is working on this, so I thought I would point people to ClipperZ -- they are combining Identity 2.0 (using existing systems) and building distributed reputation managers on top of that.

And of course, "transactions" is a very general term. Identity is to figure out that you're talking about the same person, profile information gives you some contextual information about that person, and reputation lets you know (again, in context -- relating to you and your connections) whether you should trust that person.

Mark goes on to say:

My own experience has been that its a major uphill battle convincing walled garden sites that benefit in the short term from lockin to act in the long term interest of their users.

This is the sticking point. Many of the large "containers" of identity, profile, and reputation information do not have much of an incentive to open their networks. The one thing that might challenge such silos is the rise of large amounts of federated networks. Even here, when the network is small, it is difficult to convince people to federate -- who will be the hub or aggregator of the network? Everyone will want to be in this central position, and we are back to hubs facing off against each other.

Phil Windley asked me to register for IIW 2006, so I did. See you in San Francisco in a couple of weeks...

If you're planning on coming to IIW May 1-3, I'd really appreciate you registering as soon as possible so that we can use reasonably good numbers for planning food for breaks, etc.

But, Phil, CafePress? With a deprecated 2005 URL? Come on, everyone knows the new kid on the block is GoodStorm -- capitalism done right. Shirts start at $5.95US for a "Good" quality white shirt with no markup.

Disclaimer: we've been working with the GoodStorm guys. I've got a test store that you can order a meat t-shirt from if you like. For a mere $7US! Hopefully, a new version will be Identity 2.0 enabled.

Identity-related happenings are definitely chugging along. The next Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) is something I probably need to go to (upcoming.org).

IIW is being put together by Kaliya, Doc, and Phil. I'm looking forward to doing things the open space way with my pal Kaliya. I'll have to think about what I might present. I need to spend some more time with the Clipper Z guys...maybe I can represent some of the things we talked about (distributed reputation management) when I was in Bologna on their behalf (unless they're coming, of course...).

An aside: I saw the announcement via Doc, and realized that somewhere along the way Phil Windley's excellent blog had gotten lost from my aggregator. I'm all caught up now, and realize that he's done a couple of posts that I've had rolling around in my head for a while: Google authentication (especially in regards to Joga) and the simple explanation of MicroID. It's great when you can just point to things like that and say "yes, that's pretty much what I was thinking, only written down in a clear and elegant way". Suffice it to say, Phil's back in the aggregator, and I'm looking forward to spending some time around him and other smart folks at IIW.