Tim O'Reilly once said something along the lines of "user contribution is key to market dominance", which I thought I agreed with until I read the bottom of this NYT article
"...according to a recent Jupiter survey of Internet shoppers, only about 20 percent of so-called intense shoppers considered customer-generated reviews valuable. Fewer than 10 percent of more casual shoppers regarded such reviews as valuable."
I wonder how reputation metrics were being measured. We entered a "freebie/test" culture a while back - free tastes, test drives, free trials, Fry's "return policies". The winner is whoever figures out how to increase user contribution value - if I can somehow post not just words, but an actual experience ...