John Sumser has a great post on trust, reputation, and transparency.

John writes the #1 blog and newsletter on the recruiting industry. in his long piece on trust systems, he points to Rapleaf:

Rapleaf is interesting because the rating system is independent of any particular platform. You might call it open source reputation management. Since buyers and sellers inhabit a vast array of sites and universes, the Rapleaf view appears to be platform independence. A single repository of reputation information (hmm, will they spider Amazon and the others?) is a marketplace that can facilitate other markets.

Transparency is the essence of 21st Century organization and management. The twin engines of technology and demographics make it clear that lots of heretofore unused, unneeded and unavailable information will become a part of our economic, social and commercial processes. The things you buy, use, think, inhabit, operate or otherwise consume will come wrapped in an information envelope that makes its history and legacy very apparent.

thanks John!

I found this article in sfgate recently that talks about more incidents where people have been lured into bad transactions. Apparently, the article says that this is becoming more and more common (as of 2005).

Check out the full story here

I blogged about 1 such incident here.

Theres always a chance that something can wrong with any transaction, be it on craigslist or anywhere else. There are some bad seeds out there. However, their effectiveness as bad seeds can be minimized.

Promote the people you transact with that are good seeds and increase THEIR effectiveness. You can have a hand in making it safer for you and everyone else by simple choosing to interact with good people and telling other people that this person is good.

Soon enough, it will be a lost cause to screw people over because they know that once they do, they will be burned forever. Instead, the path to more profitability will be through ethical behavior.

thanks to the diggers for getting this on the home page.

The San Francisco Chronicle blog has a funny post in yesterday’s blog:
Get some cash and some karma

Snip:

RapLeaf, which is trying to hire three software engineers, has resorted to a $5,000 referral reward to anyone who refers the right candidate.

Hoffman was inspired by KarmaOne, an online job site which offers bounties for referrals.

Bear in mind, these guys are looking for “amazing” staffers. RapLeaf recently hired a marketing person after reviewing 436 resumes.

yeah … and we hired a gorilla.

Today, Scott Allen released the full details on the survey on trust in online transactions:

Transactional Trust in Social Commerce
(PDF, 13 pages, 113K - Right-click and Save Link As or Save Target As to download)

it is a great survey (sponsored by Rapleaf) and gives a real insight into the impedements and catalyzers of buying and selling.

Key survey point is that ratings are the more important criteria for buyers and the seconf most for sellers:

thanks Scott for putting this together.

In an announcement today, eBay essentially told its users to take a hike.

eBay is raising fees, in some cases over 6%, because it wants to improve its stock price on Wall Street. at the same time, of course, eBay is raising taxes on thousands of eBay customers. no taxation without representation??? exactly.

eBay to its members: “we’re begging you to NOT sell on eBay. sell somewhere else. Sell on craigslist (free). Sell on Edgeio (free). Sell on Google (not free but has a market-based system).”

while most internet services are lowering their prices, eBay continues to raise its price without adding a lot of additional benefits to its users.

eBay, the CompuServe of 2006, continues to close itself off and tell its users to take a hike. eBay used to be a walled-garden but thriving economy (like Singapore). Today eBay is more like North Korea … insular, erratic, and makes decisions not based on the best interest of its citizens.

Eric Mattson, the host of the Marketing Monger Podcast was kind enough to invite me onto his podcast. It was a lot of fun and a great opportunity to discuss Rapleaf.

check it out here

Rapleaf was mentioned in yesterday’s BusinessWeek online round-up:

What’s the Trick to Selling on the Net?
Build up a reputation for being trustworthy. For the three quarters of a million small businesses that rely primarily on eBay (EBAY), along with hundreds of thousands more that use other sites, the ratings accorded the seller are key in establishing buyer confidence.

A new survey of consumers by Rapleaf.com, a site that helps businesses establish selling “scores,” showed the seller’s reputation to be the most important criterion in closing a sale, followed by the site’s reputation, and the payment methods accepted. More than 70% of buyers sampled reported not doing business with a seller because they didn’t have a sense of trust, and half reported an experience in which the product wasn’t accurately pictured or described.

and special thanks to Scott Allen for putting together the survey that BusinessWeek refers to.

Mercury news reported a story today about an unsuspecting craigslist poster being robbed at gunpoint. The posters were trying to sell some jackets via craigslist. When going to meet the buyers, they were robbed at gunpoint. Read the full story here.

This is the type of behavior that Rapleaf is trying to protect people from. Had the posters known something about the buyers prior to meeting them, this could have been avoided. One good thing is that no one was hurt in this, but its not a stretch to imagine something much worse happening.

We all love craigslist and the opportunity to sell items to peers. However, it does expose us to the grim realities of the real world. With Rapleaf, we want to make it easier and safer for people to interact with each other.

Thanks to andrew laffoon for sending me this article.

Auren likes bananas. He likes them so much he bought 18 unripened bananas and we expect them to be gone within a week. Auren also bought enough startup food to last for months.

Cereals? Check. Wheat Thins? Oh yeah. Sports drinks? We’re internet athletes dammit! This is a marathon and we are the starting lineup.

As you can see we created an aisle full of goodies known by RapLeafers as the “RapLeaf Supermarket”. Everyone other than Manish will have to eat the microwaveable chow mein. He was feeling too lethargic and unproductive afterwards and we can’t have that.

If you would like to send us free food, by all means go ahead. We love to eat, especially while expanding this RapLeaf movement. Just please check the expiration date before sending anything.

Rapleaf recently commissioned a survey through Scott Allen to determine what users of classifieds and auction sites really want.

we found some really interesting results.

Some interesting stats:

Among buyers, 67% selected ratings of the seller as “very important”, with an additional 25% labeling it “somewhat important”. The reputation of the site itself, rather than of the individual seller, was also an important factor for determining trust, with 63% rating it as “very important”. The payment method being used was a close third. Other factors considered included the quality of the ad, an e-mail or phone call with the seller, endorsements and testimonials, web research of the seller, and intuition/prayer/gut reaction.

For sellers, the payment method being used was the most important factor, with 81% rating it as somewhat or very important. Posted ratings of the buyer was a close second at 77%.

Scott has some more insights into the survey. I actually haven’t seen the full survey results set yet … Scott will be sending it to me today or tomorrow. So I am looking forward to reviewing it fully and I will try to poke through some broader qualitative and quantitative trends.

About 1 year ago, Kyle MacDonald set out on a mission to get a house. He decided that he would trade various things until he could trade up for 1 house. It started with one red paper clip. 14 trades and 1 year later, he had his house.

This story is pretty incredible when you see the series of trades he went through and how it all started with a red paper clip. You can see all the trades that led up to his new house here.

I for one thinks this is just an amazing effect the internet can give you. You might not find something valuable, but the internet connects you to people who might find value in that item. Even if its just an ordinary red paper clip.

If anyone is interested, i have in my possession the absolute, ugliest mouse pad in the world. If anyone is interested in trading something to have it, please contact me with any offers =)

In the last two months, eBay has announced it is closing its doors to Google Checkout and Rapleaf … thereby proving it is an uber-walled-garden a la CompuServe of the 1990s.

Here is a great overview over at TechEffect:

eBay is becoming more and more territorial, and is on the verge of becoming a completely closed network.

And Webtown has a quick post on eBay — Open up or die out.

Super-search engineer Naghi Prasad emailed me today about a story in the SF Chronicle about “Web gives some disgruntled customers satisfaction“. snip:

“There’s no question that publicly shaming someone, whether it is a politician or a company, is the best way not only to get their attention but to change their behavior,” said Jeff Chester, executive director for the consumer advocacy group Center for Digital Democracy in Washington. “People are going to be very sensitive to it.”

and, of course, people are also doing the opposite on the Internet. their publicizing the companies they love and encouraging others to buy from them. reputation is becoming increasingly important…

Rapleaf was mentioned in today’s Wall Street Journal in an article on venture capital by Becky Buckman. Buckman is one of the most insightful journalists on venture capital and start-ups. Article was on the front page of today’s (Saturday edition) paper.

She mentions Rapleaf only briefly … but it is our first mention in the Wall Street Journal. snip:

Last month, at a brunch for young techies at the San Francisco home of former PayPal Inc. CEO Peter Thiel, some entrepreneurs dismissed venture capitalists’ transparent efforts to woo them at parties. When Auren Hoffman, the 32-year-old founder of Internet company Rapleaf Inc., saw some venture capitalists had managed to squeeze into the brunch, he said, “They must have crashed.”

Skypeteer, the site for the coolest Skype plug-ins, just announced Rapleaf for Skype. you can download the plug-in and your skype picture will always be an up-to-date Rapleaf icon.

also … some people in the Skype community are working on a mash-up for Skype so that you can see someone’s Rapleaf rating every time someone on Skype contacts you.

special thanks to Hans Blaauw in Holland for building the Rapleaf plug-in for Skype.

Ben Smith sent me this article in the San Jose Mercury News:

Serial robber in S.J. lures victims through Craigslist ads

snip:

Police say the robber is using Craigslist’s classified ads and forums to draw people in. In each case, the victim was either buying or selling something from the robber and would arrange to meet him at a certain location, San Jose police Sgt. Nick Muyo said.

Once there, the man would rob the victims at gunpoint and make off with property, mostly electronics, or cash if he was pretending to sell something.

of course, this is the exception and not the rule on craigslist. Most transactions on craigslist work well and it is extremely rare that any type of criminal act occurs. but while these transactions are extremely rare, we hope Rapleaf can reduce them even further.

thanks Ben for sending us the article.