I just read about a bold new idea. It is Page Rank for People. Instead of assigning a rank to web pages like Google does already, somebody could assign and track ranking of individuals. This is a type of reputation ranking. The best part of this idea was all the comments people wrote on the topic.Many thought this would be very hard to implement. Others thought you could mimic a lot that is already being done for web page rank. Obviously you need some type of secure ID to prevent impersonators. A technology called Calais already parses web pages to find people on them. This might be an extension of that idea.
There are a number of issues involved. Consider the fact that many people have the exact same name. The goal of this technology would be to bridge web pages with actual people. For all we know, Google may already be working on this technology in stealth mode.
You would need to detect false networks to get this to work correctly. Nobody wants to trust a score that can be easily gamed. Another issue might be the use of ghostwriters. You may have to alter your people rank accordingly for them. However this is probably no different than somebody else writing your web pages for you.
All in all, it is a very interesting idea. I await the first implementation. Perhaps it will be done by Google. Or it might be the event that marks the decline of Google as we know it.
