If you really want to see Whuffie in action today, take a look at some of the escort review sites. (Where you can find reviews of call girls that you might want to screw, and read about their previous encounters.) Guys post reviews of girls they've seen, and the more favorable reviews, the more page hits & emails you get. Which makes for more income. If you're a rip-off, word gets out. If you're solid, word gets out.
Either way it's peer review of a hooker you might consider hiring. (Johns aren't exactly peers, but it works for the metaphor.) But the only problem is that there's not really any checks or balances to the system. Someone could post a bad review out of spite, etc. And you really don't have a way of cleaning it up. Also, a lot of guys don't care to share their noctural (sometimes noontime) wanderings on a semipublic board, so you don't get any Whuffie at all, when they should be yelling your phone number from the rooftops.
So, yeah Whuffie lives, and I live it every day.
Yesterday's upsideclown is a fun scifi rant which talks about skarma, which seems to be like Whuffie.
Posted by Aaron Swartz at January 21, 2003 07:43 AMCheck out the netmood.net reader. Very Whuffie like. The stock ticker like stats are pretty cool.
Posted by x at January 23, 2003 01:08 PM