The Race to Create a Web of Reputation

One of the big issues with the ongoing explosion of social media, whether it’s blogging or Twitter or Facebook, is a lack of effective ways to filter the signal from the noise -- in other words, to figure out who we should pay attention to.

Facebook relies on your existing social graph, while Twitter uses its own internal algorithms to suggest people you should follow, and LinkedIn uses your professional status and co-workers or contacts as the benchmark. But the race continues to try and measure online reputation in an effective way. Should it be based on activity? Number of followers? A ranking system in which people can vote on you? All of the above?

One of the latest to jump into this race is Mixtent, which launched with a voting-based system that uses data from your LinkedIn profile once you log in with your credentials (and will also pull in your Facebook info if you connect that as well). The company says it is “building a professional reputation graph on top of the main social and professional networks” in order to help people hire others and get hired themselves. If Mixtent looks a little familiar, that’s because it appears to be almost identical to a LinkedIn-based game known as Cube Duel that got some attention a couple of weeks ago, in which users vote for co-workers and can “unlock” various badges, and so on.