Friendly Favors

= pay-it-forward based Social Network Site located in California, which uses Thankyous currency as Reputation system

Background

Building a Worldwide Social Reputation System Presented at ISDE5.org – UC Berkeley, June 7, 2007 By Sergio Lub – [email protected] - www.favors.org/profile/24

It is proposed in this paper to expand the existing social online reputation systems to create a worldwide Social Reputation System (SRS) to measure the amount of social capital a person has built by positively interacting with others - as our present Financial Credit System indicates the credit worthiness a person has built by meeting financial obligations.

With SRS in place a good person will be recognizable anywhere as such and will have more opportunities since people will more easily trust them. In a similar way, widely available credit reports allow lending institutions to recognize good borrowers and to treat them accordingly.

Furthermore, this system is to be freely available online to every person who wishes to use it and who may contribute information to it as they build their online database. The vision is to make the system non-commercial, with an open source free software application and a non-centralized architecture. This collaborative database is to double as a living directory that can be used by each participant to find and connect with any other, searching by name, location, organization, skill or interest within a web of trust.

Model

A prototype model of an online Social Reputation System has been designed has been in use since 1998, it presently interconnects over 50,000 people in over 100 countries, the name of the network is Friendly Favors - www.favors.org

To explore FF you will need to first register online and then login to explore it. As an Applicant you will have limited access to others in the network. To enjoy higher features you will need to be accepted into the web of trust. For this to happen you need to locate within the network an active participant that will recognize you and is willing to post a good referral in your online profile, thus vouching for you Identity if you are an Acquaintance (referral level 1), or also vouching for your Integrity if you are selected as a Friend (referral level 2). The accumulations of those referral points are used as votes to build each participant’s social reputation.

Having an online community with real names and verifiable trusted relationships serves as a solid base for other social innovations; for example Favors.org has since 1999 its own mutual credit complementary social currency called Thankyous – which has already saved its participants over US$2 million and has strengthened relationships by encouraging participants to do more favors for each other. For each referral point a participant receives the person can issue 100Ts on credit – so the overdraft protection is proportional to my social capital. You can learn more about Thankyous by visiting FAQs after login in at Favors.org and trough the following article: http://tinyurl.com/zcm8j

Body

Our economic system uses financial credit rating services to determine the credit risk of each individual and organization. These databases are the most important tools used by economic institutions to determine who has access to credit and to what degree.

We all recognize the value of having a good credit rating and have allowed corporations to develop such a system. People also recognize the value of being a good human being but so far we do not have a good way to measure good will. Integrity, honesty, generosity, friendship are human qualities that are valuable mostly to humans, not necessarily to businesses, therefore we should not expect corporations to invest in accounting for these soft assets. A true Social Reputation System – SRS – must then be done by people as a self-serving service.

Countless times we encounter situations in which our financial credit rating is not enough. A potential employer wants personal references and so is a landlord before renting us. Or there are emergencies, like when one of your children ends hospitalized overseas and it will take you 3 days to get there – who can you call in that area that you can trust and ask to please help your child until you can get there? Certainly credit reports do not work well in these situations, actually in many developing countries criminals are the ones with the best credit

Friendly Favors is being collaboratively developed since 1995, under the early guidance of the late futurist Willis Harman, as a free social networking tool and is being improved by its users as a free global utility. In the year 2000, it was officially launched in New York City at the State of the World Forum to interconnect this 4,000 strong think-tank - www.favors.org/SWF