I was invited to speak with Professor Arun Sundararajan‘s “Networks, Crowds and Markets” class on the topic of “Trust and the Sharing Economy.” The discussion focused on current trust indicators on collaborative consumption platforms and potential ideas for solving the trust issue currently present.

1. Trust and the
Sharing Economy

2. Topics of Interest
• Defining sharing economies
• Current trust indicators
• Solving the trust issue

3. Defining Economies
Commercial economies: “prices are the primary
source of information about, and incentive for,
resource allocation”
Sharing economies: “non-price-based social
relations play those roles.”
- Yochai Benkler, “Sharing Nicely”

4. Lessig’s Hybrid Economy
Hybrid economies: “one that builds upon both the
sharing and commercial economies, one that adds
value to each … either a commercial entity that
aims to leverage value from a sharing economy, or
it is a sharing economy that builds a commercial
entity to better support its sharing aims”
- Lawrence Lessig, “Remix”

5. Three Stages So Far
• Purely digital
– Flickr, YouTube, forums, communities, etc.
• Focused on sharing
– Freecycle, Couchsurfing
• Driven by value
– Airbnb, Skillshare, WhipCar, Spinlister, SnapGoods

6. The Rise of a New Term…
Collaborative consumption: “an economic
model based on
sharing, swapping, bartering, trading or renting
access to products as opposed to ownership”
- Wikipedia

7. What Can You Share?

8. Altruism vs. Value

9. When Trust Fails

10. Airbnb Aims To Fix It
• $50,000 Host Guarantee
• Address verification
• 24/7 hotline
• Social verification dashboard
• And a whole lot more…

11. Transparent Profiles

12. Integrating the Social Graph

13. Airbnb’s Social Connections

14. Bespoke Insurance
• Insurance for unusual items
• Love Home Swap is working with Lloyd’s to
develop insurance for housing swaps

15. TaskRabbit: An Intense Application
• Essays
• Video Interview (OVIA screening platform)
• Criminal background check
– SSN, name, address
– National, state, local levels

16. Sittercity: Many Profile Checks

17. TaskRabbit: Leaderboards

18. Done.com: Credit Card Verification

19. TrustCloud: A Reputation System
• Mission: help users understand and leverage
online trust they’ve built in the sharing economy
• Immediately accessible, portable, objective,
transparent, secure

20. TrustCloud’s Methodology
• Data vapor: transparency, consistency, longevity
– Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+
• Virtuous data: credible, reliable, helpful
– Yelp, TripAdvisor, Quora

21. What about Influence?
• Klout: standard measurement of influence
– measures network size, posting frequency, amplification
– 1-100 scale

22. The Influence Wars
• Kred enters the area
– Influence: 1-1000 score based on retweets, followers, replies
– Outreach: 1-10 score on generosity; rewards actions, interactions with others

23. Kred Scores are Transparent
• Kred shows users an “Activity Statement”

24. Online Meets Offline
• Kred lets users pull in “Offline Kred”

25. Influence vs. Reputation
• Doesn’t account for negative feedback
– 400 negative @mentions = 400 positive @mentions
• Quantity over quality
– Network size
– Posting frequency
– Responses

26. Solving the Trust Issue
• Incorporating transparent profiles
• Integrating the social graph
• Developing bespoke insurance
• Implementing screening processes
• Ranking users on a leaderboard
• Verifying buyer credibility
• Creating a reputation system
• Pulling in offline credibility

27. How can we
solve the trust
problem?