“Colts Cred” proving to be a slippery concept

Your reputation prodeeds you. No doubt that’s the case. And thanks to E bay, I can see reputation management systems online can be just the thing to grease an economy.

I’m trying to bake a social currency, or reputation system, into mycolts.net because I’ve read that most successful communities have such systems.

Here’s my recipe, or rationale, for a system we’re calling “Colts Cred”.

1. Colts fans tell us they want to be VISIBLE. They want to show off their passion and be noticed for being BIG fans (which could mean they’re loyal, knowledgeable, zany or something else).

2. Experts in sociology tell us that humans like to interact with eachother, and COMPETITION is one of our most favorite means of interaction.

Add these together and I conclude that if we give fans a way to quantify their level of fandom, if we give them a RANK, then they can wear that rank as a badge, and others can enter into dialogue or relationship with that fan knowing in advance they kind of hair pin they’re dealing with.

“Colts Cred” will be a form of “social currency”.

In my earliest days of research for social nets, I stumbled on the concept of social currency. Read a good defitinition here (from OntheCommons).

Here’s an excerpt: A social currency is the reputation score an individual or entity acquires in a particular social network that credibly reflects their value in that network. For example, like a monetary currency, the value of a social currency may be set by the demand that an individual in a given social network can command, as in some kind of supply and demand calculation. Yet the calculation may also reflect a more subtle calculation of value based upon peer ratings of performance that cannot be captured in measures of supply and demand.

D’Arcy Norman takes the concept of social currency even deeper (read this post). Some think social currency might even replace real money some day.

It makes sense to me that we’d have a way for fans to see how they rank versus other fans, however I’m finding it difficult to decide exactly how this sytem should work and precisely why it will matter.

Do I need to offer rewards for achieving certain rankings?

Can points be exchanged for “stuff” or “experiences”?

Anyone out there got any suggestion?