Dave Kearns

David Recordon (from Verisign) just pointed me to Trusted Opinion, a startup in the social networking niche whose “hook” is about gathering opinions concerning just about anything. Opinions are then weighted based on the “degree of friendship” with the user (friend, friend of a friend, etc.). As they describe it:

“ Imagine if all your friends had a place that combines their top picks into one shared list. No more strangers. Just reliable recommendations from your circle of friends and their friends, and friends of their friends…“

But I don’t value my friends’ opinions higher than strangers because they’re intrinsically better. I value them because I understand my friends’ likes and dislikes, prejudices and preferences. In other words, I can put my friends’ recommendations in context – something I can’t do with the opinion of a stranger.

I do (and you do, too) the same thing with so-called “expert opinion.” I value the reviews of the San Jose Mercury theater reviewer more than those of the San Francisco Chronicle reviewer because I’ve read much more of the Merc’s reviews. That means I know exactly where my opinion and the Merc’s reviewer’s opinion coincides and diverges so that I can evaluate her review in light of past experience.

Trusted Opinion might become the basis for an engine to be used within another social network (Facebook, say, or whichever one is the “hot” meeting place of the moment) but as a stand-alone system, it has very little potential.

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