If you wished you could live off your sterling reputation, like the people in Cory Doctorow‘s Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, then rejoice — the Whuffie Bank has arrived.
Of course, right now it looks pretty basic: All it seems to do is tell you how many times someone on Twitter has mentioned you lately. Soon it’ll tell you how many people on Facebook have done something or other. But it’s just ramping up, and there are big plans. Eventually you’ll “get a monthly salary based on your reputation. Whuffie is the world’s first social currency.”
Where will this money come from? Hard to say. Already, the Whuffie Bank is one of TechCrunch’s Top 50 innovative startups of 2009. The biggest flaw in this plan, though, is that Doctorow’s novel takes place in a largely post-scarcity world, and I don’t quite think we’re there yet. [The Whuffie Bank via ThreeFivesUp]
