“We are working on reputation systems … You may not know someone is trustworthy, but other people who are trustworthy trust them.”One of the challenges, he said, is the balance between anonymity — anyone can create a twitter account — and reliability. He noted that anonymity was key to the Iranians posting images and news of the government crackdown.

“Anonymity was a key thing for the people there … How do you have anonymmity and trust … that is a key thing,” he said.

These quotes from Evan Williams in this CBS News story are very intriguing. I’m interested in these “reputation systems” that Twitter is developing, how they will be implemented, and their effectiveness. What kind of systems can you think of that would address the complex intersections of anonymity and trust/credibility in an ecosystem like Twitter? Is this a real need and how will the Twitterverse respond to the implementation of some sort of reputation system?

Posted via web from markgammon