Times and Measures

Announcing Mnikr

Apr 2, 2009

At long last, I’ve got something to show you all; I present Mnikr (pronounced like “moniker”).

Mnikr is a system both to allow you to take advantage of the entire Distributed Social network (DiSo), and to allow everyone to build reputations online through a stock-market-like system. How does that work? Well, each person can buy up to five shares of another person’s reputation (five shares in one person, not five shares total). As that person’s reputation rises, the investor (and the person in question) receives dividends– one could think of them as “goodwill,” which can then be invested back into the community.

So there are a few core ideas here, that I think are interesting:

I’ll be writing my Master’s thesis on Mnikr’s design and, with your help, some of the results we find together. Regardless, though, I’ve greatly enjoyed working on it, and I hope all of you will enjoy using it to explore your social networks. It has a fledgeling API as well; I’m hoping that some enterprising developers might enjoy using the reputation data Mnikr will provide.

As thanks for reading my blog, I’ll give you a code to get some starter points with which to buy your first few reputation shares:

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That will give you 50 points, which will be enough to invest in at least a few people around you. Again, find your friends using the Search tab, if they don’t show up on the list of friends on your own page. You can enter the code on your Portfolio tab; it’s displayed when you log in. Mnikr uses OpenID for logins, so you don’t have to create yet another account!

Please feel free to leave comments here, or using the Feedback link at Mnikr (which will take you to Uservoice); I’m anxious to hear comments, critiques, criticisms, or suggestions for more features!

Once again, thanks for reading, and I hope to see you all at Mnikr!


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