Day 9 Predictions

Online Trust and Identity

It's kind of puzzling that a service like couchsurfing works despite the fact that it relies on people's ability to trust complete strangers. If now people can rely on reviews made by other users, it would be interesting to know how the site dealt with that issue in the beginning.

We'd be also interested in hearing about the identity verification system that Daniel mentioned at approx. 23:30 in the YouTube video mentioned bellow. How are they getting access to passport numbers and credit card numbers? If it is that much better at identifying people, why hasn't eBay implemented something like this?

Motivations and Community

It's interesting how the Extraordinaries (great name, reminded me of the Pixar movie The Incredibles) is for-profit, while Couchsurfing is non-profit. Will the Extraordinaries be able to build a Couchsurfing or Wikipedia-type community even though it's for-profit?

We were struck by the fissures within the couchsurfing movement. It seems inevitable in these bottom-up, free internet communities that there will be intense fights over the direction of the project. What keeps communities like Wikipedia and Couchsurfing from still providing useful services despite all the chatter? Could that balance be reversed? How do we keep the community motivated enough to keep contributing?

Additional Info

Here is a related youtube video, CouchSurfing: What one website reveals about the future of the net.