Finding others online

Abstract

In this paper, we examine what types of reputation information users find valuable when selecting someone to interact with in online environments. In an online experiment, we asked users to imagine that they were looking for a partner for a social chat. We found that similarity to the user and ratings from the user's friends were the most valuable pieces of reputation information when selecting chat partners. The context in which reputations were used (social chat, game or newsgroup) affected the self-reported utility of the pieces of reputation information