The biggest issue the new sharing economy is currently facing is one of trust. After issues like the Airbnb debacle and high-end car sharing service HiGear’s closure due to theft, it’s clear that trust issues are the main barrier preventing sharing from becoming mainstream.

The answer that everyone seems to be looking for is a some sort of global reputation system. There has been a lot of talk about a single “reputation score” that you could take with you in any new service. At a first glance the idea seems like a winner: with every action you do in the web affecting the score, it would be easy to find the rotten apples.

However, it turns out this idea is fundamentally flawed.

Do current reputation systems like Klout or Trustcloud do an effective enough job of establishing trust to work for collaborative consumption services? Shareable: Aggregation, Not Algorithms, Is The Key To Establishing Trust Online