Why a reputation economy?

My friend Tim Harford (of Undercover Economist fame, which you should read if you haven't) has started blogging at the FT.com, which is in itself an interesting new direction for the FT but more importantly already a source of some interesting economics commentary. If you're interested in either economics or the latest content-creation strategies of UK online newspapers (and one way or another I think that should cover almost all of you) go and have a look.

Tim starting blogging in earnest reminds me of a conversation we once had on the subject of that hoary old staple - why do people blog?

Blogging is of course part of what we're currently calling the "reputation economy" - people doing work for reputational rather than financial gain. Why is this more prevalent than ever? Well, the tools are more readily available so there's some supply-side but I also speculate it's connected to two other trends:

• the incentive system that - legend has it - was first hit on by Billy Butlin (he of holiday camp fame) of rewarding his staff for good performance not with money but with spuriously inflated titles and (literally) more impressive hats. (Which of course has led to the current situation where everyone who works at Morgan Stanley calls themselves a VP and you can tell nothing about a person's abilities or experience from her job title.)

And

• the trend for companies refusing to give references, beyond the "yes, she worked here" one line response, for fear that a bad reference will result in them being sued by the employee if they don't get the job and a good one in them being sued by the new employer if the employee doesn't perform.

Two trends that combine to make it impossible or at least needlessly difficult to know who's competent or experienced.

And so we blog, as the only verifiable way left to us to prove we know what we're talking about. That's today's guess anyway.