I trust Jon Lebkowsky. I think I even spelled his name right. I met him on the Well, knew him by reputation as a blogger, sxsw presence, and fringeware review alumnus. He and I cohost blog, formerly blog.ind, a featured conference on the Well.
I trust Aldon Hynes. We met as tech-savvy volunteers for the Dean campaign. I interviewed Aldon for the Power of Many book. We were both credentialed bloggers at the 2004 Democratic Convention, which may be the only time we’ve met face to face. A picture David Weinberger took of Aldon and myself in Boston that was posted to Flickr is perennially one of the few image results for searches of me on Google.
I don’t see what Spock.com has to do with any of this.
What Spock has to do with trust is similar to what other social networks have to do with trust. By saying that you trust someone on Spock and that you have a relationship with them, you are connecting your networks together. They may already be connected, but this is another way to connect. You are also letting others who do research on you find out who you know and who your common contacts are. This is the biggest benefit I get out of Spock, the ability to confirm that those who contact me on FaceBook, etc., are who they say they are.
Just my two cents. Kathy Jacobs, Spock Evangelist
Christian,
What you received from Jon Lebkowsky was a user generated e-mail, where if the request was accepted would allow you and Jon to exchange messages and contact information. Accepting a trust invitation would also enable Jon to include you in his search network, thereby allowing him to refine his search in Spock. Spock is first a foremost a people search application that organizes people who are on the Web. A search network on Spock is similar to a LinkedIn network in that it searches the relevant people you know first. This allows Spock users to contact each other while enabling people the ability to pick and choose who they want in their search network. Please note that Trust Requests are by invitation only and that you have the ability to reject any requests that you would not want to accept. Please visit www.spock.com if you’d like to learn more
I guess what I’m saying is that if Spock wants to know that I trust these two people, they can look here on my blog, which also points to my OpenID provider, and parse that info out.
I don’t see why it’s my job to populate Spock with valuable network trust info, especially before I hear how this will ever truly benefit me personally, let alone the collective.
I’m not against Spock profiting by making a collection but what’s in it for me?