I think the idea of a reputation system is very interesting. However, there are also some flaws with it. For the sake of this post, I will us EBay as the example because I am most familiar with it. As someone who uses EBay on a somewhat regular basis to buy such a wide variety of things, a user's reputation may be the determination of whether or not they can even make a purchase. When I first started on EBay in middle school, the scope of products that were available was not nearly as large as it is today. One problem that I had though was buying my first item. I is not an uncommon occurrence to see no zero or negative feedback bidders posted in the item description. If this is the case, how does one get their first feedback without buying an item? That being said, it seems very cool that in a system where millions of people are "connected" to each other and have never met, that they can have some knowledge about what type of person this is and whether or not to do business with them. This is similar to the effect that blogging can have on businesses. If people post positive feedback, then consumers might be more inclined to proceed with their business. The reverse is also true.