Welcome to Kyle Wilson at Rapleaf … we stole Kyle from AMD where he hailed as a Senior Systems Engineer and master of all things network/systems/ops. Now he is master of servers at Rapleaf.

Some interesting tidbits about Kyle:

• - He was a math major from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• - He brings a lot of baked goods to the office (all of us at Rapleaf love his girlfriend)
• - He now wins the award for living the closest to the office (he lives 2 blocks away) … which is very important for a network person (and beats his old commute of 80 miles) … now five of Rapleaf’s seven employees live within 7 blocks of work …

Since he manages all our servers, Kyle is now the most powerful person in the company … so be nice to him.

There’s a great article in UC Berkeley’s COE Engineering News about Rapleaf and its origins. Check it out here.

[…] RapLeaf traces its roots to Shah. In the spring of 2005, he was a student in the College’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (CET) program. In his CET class IEOR 190A, he heard a guest lecture on Silicon Valley entrepreneurship by Hoffman, a successful businessman who has founded three companies. After graduating, Shah called Hoffman and pitched him an idea for a system that would make people more ethical. […]

Classified listings catered to college students - awesome niche market. Mix high costs of college textbooks and furniture with an early adopter crowd and you get a demand that must be met. And it’s met with vigor - introducing Dormitem.com.

Dan Scudder and the team at DormItem have taken the next step in classified listings (similarly to Edgeio)…they integrated Rapleaf into their classifieds site for college students. How awesome is that!

On the East Coast, DormItem is a powerhouse in college classifieds, especially at places like Babson College. And we’re excited that they’ve chosen Rapleaf as their feedback system. Colleges have been big propopents of DormItem. Maybe it’s because they have the word “Dorm” in their name? Hmm, maybe. But maybe it’s because they promote a safe environment and effectively use feedback, via Rapleaf, to create a trusted marketplace. Yeah I think that’s it!

NOTE: We’re all for increasing safety for college students who transact in and around campus .

I’ve always thought eBay’s marketplace did not have any flaws. Its system is designed to help facilitate commerce transactions and in return they are able to monitor the transactions and effectively control the feedback system…further encouraging more transactions.

And it’s pretty apparent that having a high eBay reputation can illicit a higher premium on products. And not only that, you gain more trust in the buyer/seller.

Now what if I told you there was a way to raise your eBay ratings 10+ points within a matter of 200 seconds? What about 150 seconds? What about 100 seconds? And for only $0.10…would you be up for it?

I would hope you would say “no”! This system called “feedback farming” or “ballot stuffing” (depending on how you look at it) is highly unethical and not at all accurate of one’s reputation in buying or selling. By allowing sellers to sell eBooks for less than nothing, eBay has opened up a way for fraudsters to cheat the system.

I, by all means, do not encourage this behavior (that’s the risk you take in exposing issues like this - people are now aware and they commit the same acts). I am however encouraging you to carefully examine the buyers and sellers on eBay and fully look into their ratings, comments, and feedback. Do not accept their ratings at face value.

When it comes down to it, what does it mean for you? As I mentioned before, sellers with higher ratings garner more trust as well as more business. If these “feedback farmers” raised their reputation value unethically you could get screwed by:

1.) being frauded

2.) paying more for someone with a “higher” reputation

3.) having your trust taken advantage of

Fully utilize a rating system (especially ours) and be on the look out for this type of activity!

vFlyer officially launched today. this is a great site that helps sellers promote their merchandise anywhere (including craigslist, their own web site, Google Base, etc). basically allowing you to pimp your craigslist listing. i found it super useful and we’ve even used it internally at Rapleaf to promote jobs we are recruiting for

and vFlyer has a very cool implementation of Rapleaf. after signing up for vFlyer just go to your account, click on the “reputation” tab, and (if you already have a Rapleaf account under the email address you use at vFlyer) your Rapleaf account will automatically appear. then you just need to click on the checkbox to include your Rapleaf score on your flyers.

check out the flyer i made in less than 30 seconds with vFlyer. ok … it is not too pretty … but on the bottom of the flyer you can view “my reputation” and directly comment on me via vFlyer (which is powered by Rapleaf). very cool.

vFlyer is lead by Aaron Sperling and Oliver Muoto — both of whom have been a real pleasure to work with. All of us at Rapleaf are excited about the vFlyer launch and we are looking forward to their success.