Building a trust system into a social app
bjclark: There's a larger concept that I think you are overlooking. Real identity vs Hidden Identity (or Psuedo Identity). This is the fundamental difference between Facebook and Myspace. People tend to act very differently when they are using their own identity (portrait of themselves, real name, etc), sometimes negating the need to even have a "karma" type system.Also, if your "social" app requires friend requests/acceptance, as most "social" apps do, you further negate the need for a trust system. This is because the mere existence of friending/friend clusters are used in place of a trust system. You're implicitly trusting everyone you "friend".