Techcrunch has a good review of iKarma. I’ve been on the site for a while now and agree with most of what they said, both the good and bad.
Tagging can wait, it’s usefulness to average customer is lost. I spend a lot of time talking about tagging, and most people have to let the concept sink in for a while before they can take advantage of the power tagging unleashes in Web 2.0 applications.
Contextually sensitive profile sharing is important but partitioning on email address won’t work.
Opening up the API is key, no new web service can survive without doing this.
They need deals, and not eBay deals. They will not get that until they have a track record and bring their feature set more in line with what eBay users are used to.
1-5 rating scale won’t work, not near enough granularity for reputation management.
There seems to be some movement at Opinity, which is patenting several features, including it’s dispute resolution process. They also have added tags, although the usage is not clear past being able to promote the reputation you want, which seems counterproductive.
I like the Network Visualizer, a step further than the simple visualization I created for the dating industry. I would love to be able to extend the visualization and add it’s back end to enhance it to do what I feel is useful, not that they think. Enter the open API.
