Establishing the Credibility of Social Web Applications

In recent years, there has been a steady shift in the nature of Web applications. The vehicle of this transition of Web applications is us, the people. The ability to post photographs or videos, exchange music snippets with peers, and annotate a piece of information, are but a few exemplars of this phenomenon. Indeed, the pseudonym Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005) has been used to describe the apparent “socialization” of the Web. In spite of the significant prospects offered by humancentric Web applications, the mere fact that virtually anyone can set up such applications claiming to sell products and services or upload/post unscrutinized information on a topic as being “definitive,” raises the issues of credibility from a consumers’ viewpoint. Therefore, establishing credibility is essential for an organization’s reputation and for building consumers’ trust. The rest of the article is organized as follows. We first provide the background necessary for later discussion. This is followed by the introduction of a framework within which different types of credibility in the context of human-centric Web applications can be systematically addressed and thereby improved. Next, challenges and directions for future research are outlined. Finally, concluding remarks are given.