Trust and the Sharing Economy

Charles Green recently published a paper describing the growth of a concept he calls the Trust Economy, describing also new businesses that are operating in this new economy, such as:

• AirBnb, allowing home owners can rent out rooms in their homes to the general public
• TaskRabbit, where people in need of specific services (babysitting, shopping, or decorating) can subcontract people that are reliable and capable people that can deliver those services
• RelayRides, allowing car owners to rent out their cars to people looking for leasing a car at a good price 

The common elements of the business model behind these companies are:

• They help owners of assets to increase asset utilization and improve return over investment
• Transactions usually occur between parties that do not know each other, so a measure of trust of each party is required

How to determine trustworthiness is a major obstacle in the Trust Economy.  Companies such as Ebay and Amazon have tried to minimize risk by providing rating systems to help the parties involved.   Currently, a unified and global system to determine trustworthiness does not exist...is it possible to create one?

TrustCloud is attempting to do just that, by providing a system to measure trustworthiness of individuals.   Just like US residents have a Credit Score that measures their creditworthiness, TrustCloud tries to measure Trustworthiness through a Trust Score, that ranges from 1 to 1000, and is determined by measuring online social behavior patterns.

Although the Trust Score is probably far from perfect, it is an important step to the objective a having a way to measure how trustworthy someone is, in an economy that will increasingly involve the concept of "strangers" doing business.

So, what minimum Trust Score would you require to do business with a stranger?