In the following excellent TED.com video Rachel Botsman, a ‘social innovator who writes, consults and speaks on the power of collaboration and sharing through network technologies’, talks about “collaborative consumption.”
Rachel explains:
“At it’s core it’s about empowerment. It’s about empowering people to make meaningful connections, connections that are enabling us to rediscover a humanness that we have lost somewhere along the way by engaging in marketplaces [] built on personal relationships versus empty transactions.”
She adds:
“We have wired our world to share, swap, rent, barter or trade just about anything. [] Collaborative consumption is creating the start of a transformation in the way we think about supply and demand but it’s also a part of a massive value shift underway where instead of consuming to keep up with the Jonesy’s people are consuming to get to know the Jonesy’s. But the key reason why it’s taking off now, so fast, is because every new advancement of technology increases the efficiency and the social glue of trust to make sharing easier and easier.”
Which leads us to Digital Identity. Rachel again:
“Virtual trust will transform the way we trust one another face to face. With all my optimism [] comes a healthy dose of caution or rather an urgent need to address some pressing, complex questions. How to ensure our digital identities reflect our real world identities? [] Reputation has a real world value. [] The difference today is that with every trade we make, comment we leave, person we flag, badge we earn we leave a reputation trail of how well we can and can’t be trusted. And it’s not just the breadth but the volume of reputation data out there that is staggering.”
Rachel is essentially describing Follr Digital Identity Websites when she talks about the need for a “complete picture” a “real-time stream [] that will live together in one place that will live in some kind of reputation dashboard that will paint a picture of your reputation capital.” As she points out “The future’s going to be driven by a smart aggregation of reputation” adding “ultimately, when we get it right, reputation capital could create a massive, positive disruption in who has power, trust and influence.”
She talks about “the world of recruiting, where reputation data will make the resume seem like an archaic relic of the past.” Follr Personal Digital Identity Websites address this by acting as a new form of social resume, something we have talked about before. Rachel finishes her talk with the following statement:
“In the 21st century new trust networks and the reputation capital they generate will reinvent the way we think about wealth, markets, power and personal identity in ways we can’t yet even imagine.”
We can imagine it, it’s at the heart of everything that Follr represents. You can find Rachel’s book on Amazon and while you wait for it to be delivered I hope you enjoy the video then start to create a base for your reputation capital, your Digital Identity, with Follr.
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