Trust Revisited
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
Christmas is a good time to think about online consumer trust. Comscore predicts online retail will top $100 billion in 2006. That’s good news, to be sure. But while the horses are at full gallop, it makes sense to look out ahead for obstacles or other things that might trip us up.
A few months back I speculated about the enlarging role of trust in electronic commerce. As an SEO dabbler, I had taken note of Google Trustrank, which accords trust using the deceptively simple formula: “Whomever is trusted by the trusted shall be trusted.” This fundamentally democratic approach to deciding which web pages to display in search results inspired me to think about other applications of trust-based schemes that might help stem online consumer fraud and other persistent consumer detractors. (more…)