Ever wonder what your feedback rating on ebay is worth? A kennedy business school professor did and researched it. His conclusion:

Zeckhauser’s research has determined that a person’s good reputation is not only valuable, but it’s worth about 7.6 percent in a retail transaction.

You can read the full text of the article if you want, though the above pretty well sums it up 😉

Glad to see that my fastidious behavior on ebay is likely paying off though, I really do try extremely hard to maintain my rating. Unfortunately this sometimes extends into behavior I wish I didn’t have to rely on, like not leaving negative feedback on a transaction that I wasn’t happy with for fear that the other party will leave negative feedback on me.

It also suggests to me that this whole notion of ‘persistent karma’ has some real legs. Imagine a world where everything you did online (and ultimately in real life) contributed to your karma profile. Blast a flame mail on an email list, get a bunch of negative karma. Help out some shmoe who can’t get his network routed correctly, get some positive karma. Curse out an old lady in traffic and cut her off, negative karma for you! Then when you go to do business with someone (say you’re hiring a plumber) you can check out their karma profile. This is the slashdot model writ large, and I am vastly oversimplifying, but you probably get the idea.. I’m not the first one to imagine it – Cory Doctorow over at boingboing even wrote a novel that covers the concept that you can download for free, check his website if you’re curious, and buy his novel if you think it’s cool. But more importantly t(to me anyway) – kick the idea of persistent karma around in your head too – what do you think? Good idea? Or horrific orwellian lack o’ privacy future? I’m fascinated by the whole notion and will be writing more of it here over the next couple of months.