上个周末，你很有可能曾经通过社交媒体向朋友们表达过感恩节祝福。不过，你到底跟其他人分享了多少信息呢？简单的更新一条“节日快乐”状态是一回事，可你是不是还在Twitter上发部了火鸡大餐的照片？是不是还公布了自己吃饱喝足之后，躺在沙发上看的是什么电影？还有参加晚宴时穿的是什么衣服？

    人们对于个人生活中的细节态度越来越开放，愿意在社交媒体上广泛分享。这不是什么新鲜事，不过，两家分别名为Identified和RNKD（发音为“Ranked”）的创业公司希望通过奖励手段，鼓励人们更进一步、分享更多——并同时帮助企业用户。两家公司都是在11月初的时候才刚刚启动服务。

    Identified用户所获奖励是无形的，或许可以称之为“吹牛的资本”。该网站授予用户一个分数，以衡量用户在潜在雇主眼中的吸引力，用户发布的信息越多，这一分数也就越精确。如果这听起来像是一种鸡毛蒜皮、华而不实的竞赛，该网站联合创始人布兰登•华莱士倒也不否认。“这就是一个追逐名声的游戏，”华莱士称。他本人先后毕业于普林斯顿大学（Princeton）和斯坦福大学商学院（Stanford Business School），曾在高盛工作（Goldman Sachs），不到30岁就当上了CEO——凭借这一履历，若是他参加自己网站上的排名，想必会很靠前。

    华莱士憧憬Identified能成为人们在商务社交网站LinkedIn之外的另一种选择。他认为，Facebook才是规模最大的职业社交网站，LinkedIn只能排行第二。Identified的绝大多数信息都是从Facebook上获得的——只需抓取公开信息即可。事实上，除非用户的Facebook主页完全不公开，否则他们可能已经有一个Identified资料页和排名了——哪怕他们根本还没注册该网站并使用其服务。华莱士指出：“许多人仍然将其Facebook资料页设为完全公开，这类人数量之多、透露的信息之多简直令人难以相信。”

    不过，在Identified上，人们选择分享额外的信息，乃是为了凸显自己作为求职者的吸引力。这类信息包括：大学论文的主题、评级成绩、SAT考试分数甚至是参加的夏令营等极为个人化的细节。不过，社交媒体专家、Activate公司董事总经理安尼尔•达什指出，人们愿意分享这么多信息，并不是非常出乎意料。“除了在网络上之外，关于分享的社会规范也是依各个地区、各种文化的不同而存在差异，”他说。“作为一个纽约人，我觉得在聚会上聊聊自己每月付多少房租是正常的，可在美国其他一些地区，这听起来或许就很奇怪。‘过度分享’一词的存在本身就表明，我们的文化看待分享的观点是：只有控制在一定范围内才是合适的。”

    对企业来说，Identified的吸引力显而易见：它提供了一个数据库，允许企业根据特定标准进行搜索，比如说某家律所只想找耶鲁大学（Yale）毕业生。目前已有多家大公司与Identified签约，包括百事可乐（PepsiCo）和传媒集团康泰纳仕（Conde Nast）。不出意料，风险投资者也对该网站表现出了浓厚兴趣。华莱士称，这是“因为我们掌握了其他任何人都没有的信息。”目前，Identified已筹集550万美元资金，活跃用户约为10万人。该公司计划，最终将能够创造和发行以数据分析为基础的报告，研究女性的职场表现等话题。

    Chances are pretty good that last weekend you expressed some Thanksgiving wishes to friends using social media. But how much did you share? A simple "happy holiday" status update is one thing, but did you tweet a picture of the turkey? Did you reveal what cheesy movie you watched as you lounged on the couch in full-bellied bliss? What about the outfit you wore to dinner?

    People are getting increasingly open about which details of their personal lives they are willing to share on social media. That's nothing new. But two startups, Identified and RNKD (pronounced "Ranked") are hoping to reward people for sharing even more -- and help businesses in the process. Both launched earlier this month.

    In the case of Identified, the reward is intangible; call it bragging rights. The site assigns users a score meant to represent how appealing they are to prospective employers. The more information users post, the more precise the score. If that sounds like a formula for petty, pompous competition, co-founder Brendan Wallace says that it is indeed. "It's a fame game," says Wallace, a Stanford Business School grad who himself has the kind of record that ranks very well on his site: he went to Princeton, worked at Goldman Sachs (GS) and is a CEO before age 30.

    Wallace envisions Identified as an alternative to LinkedIn (LNKD). He argues that Facebook, not LinkedIn, is the biggest online professional network. Identified gets the vast majority of its information from Facebook, merely by pulling public information. In fact, unless your Facebook page is completely private, you may already have an Identified profile and ranking -- even if you haven't signed up for the service. Wallace points out, "You wouldn't believe how many people still have their profiles set to be completely public, and what info they have up there."

    On Identified, though, Wallace says people are choosing to share additional information that represents them as a job applicant: extremely personal details such as the subject of their college thesis, their GPA, SAT scores and even summer programs they've attended. But Anil Dash, a social media authority and managing director at Activate, says it's not a huge surprise people would share so much. "Separate from the Web, norms about sharing are very cultural and local," he says. "As a New Yorker, I'll talk freely at a party about what I pay for rent, but in the rest of the country that probably seems very strange. The fact that the word 'over-sharing' even exists shows how our culture looks at sharing: that only a certain amount is appropriate."

    Identified's appeal to businesses is obvious: a database with the ability to search by specific criteria, such as if a law firm wanted to look only at Yale alums. PepsiCo (PEP) and Conde Nast are among the major companies that have already signed on with Identified. Unsurprisingly, the site has had big interest from VCs "because we have information no one else has," says Wallace. It's gotten $5.5 million in funding so far and has some 100,000 monthly active users. Eventually Identified plans to create and disseminate analytics-driven reports, on topics such as women in the workplace.

    RNKD的存在目的多少有点相似——根据信息分享，是消费者与公司实现配对。该网站由鞋类销售网站Zappos创始人尼克•斯威姆打造，希望吸引用户上传其服饰的照片，并配以详细信息。如此，用户们可以凭借其品牌忠诚度获得类似于地理定位网站Foursquare的“徽章”，比如“最佳球鞋收藏者”或“耐克（Nike）第三大拥趸”之类。“如果用户分享现在已有的服饰，它们能极佳地表明他们喜欢什么类型。”斯威姆表示，2006年他离开了Zappos，但并未脱离服装业务，而是打造了Dethrone服装品牌。他认为，RNKD对服饰消费者和销售者同样具有吸引力，因为他希望服饰品牌会提供一些特别优惠，给予忠诚消费者；而对服饰企业自身来说，该网站提供的学习机会也很有价值。例如，J.Crew公司可以发现，其顾客群体中受欢迎度排行第二的到底是什么品牌。

    他也认识到风险所在。“我们可能会发现，没人愿意分享他们衣橱里的内容，”他说。“但我认为他们将来会的。”当然，有些时尚前卫的消费者本来就喜欢分享衣橱里的各种服饰，他们肯定不会有什么顾虑。乔治城大学（Georgetown University）大四学生卡莉•黑特灵格尔开有一个称为“大学富二代”（The College Prepster）的博客。她每天早上都会发一张照片，展示自己当天穿的衣服。据她透露，籍此竟能每月吸引近15万独立访客。她认为，这在当今时尚界没有什么稀奇的。“如果你一个月前问我，我可能会告诉你，像RNKD这样的主意永远都不会成功。可是，这个行业时时刻刻都在演变不息。如今人们在个人博客中分享一张照片后，可能五分钟之内就会突然走红。”

    两家公司存在的问题也不难发现。就Identified而言，其排名系统肯定会遭到批评：某个公立大学毕业并在不那么知名的公司工作过的人士，往往比金光闪闪的哈佛大学（Harvard）毕业生更适合某项工作。就RNKD而言，它必须依赖服饰品牌的配合才能生存：如果这些品牌向其最忠诚顾客提供的奖励不够丰厚，分享照片的动力就会化为乌有。更严重的是，此前类似的想法都遭遇了滑铁卢。曾有一款称为Blippy的应用，它与用户的信用卡挂钩，使其可以分享用户的购物信息。它一度吸引了媒体的热烈关注，但最终却销声匿迹。

    两家公司都还面临着一个更大的挑战：到底有没有足够多的人愿意分享从学业成绩到平角内裤品牌的一切信息？已经与这两家网站建立合作关系的企业显然希望如此。如果所谓“过度分享”的观念进一步淡薄，这两家创业公司都有机会获得长足的发展。

    译者：小宇

    RNKD aims for something similar, pairing consumers with corporations based on sharing of information. Created by Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn, RNKD expects users to upload photos of their clothing and tag them with detailed information. By doing so, they can earn Foursquare-like badges for certain allegiances like having the best sneaker collection or being the third-most loyal to Nike (NKE). "If you share what you already own, it's the best indicator of what you like," says Swinmurn, who after leaving Zappos in 2006 stayed in apparel, creating the clothing line Dethrone. His notion is that RNKD could appeal to both buyers and sellers of clothing, because consumers will want the special deals that he hopes brands will offer, and brands will love the learning opportunity. For example, J.Crew (GPS) could find out which brand is second-most popular among its customers.

    He knows the risks. "We could find out that no one will ever share what's in their closet," he says. "But I think they will." Certainly fashion-forward shoppers that already do share their wardrobe will have no qualms. Carly Heitlinger, a Georgetown University senior, runs a blog called The College Prepster that she says gets nearly 150,000 visitors per month. She posts a photo every morning of her outfit and says that's nothing unusual in today's fashion scene: "If you asked me a month ago, I would have told you an idea like [RNKD] never would have worked. But it's an industry evolving on a minute-by-minute basis. Now someone can upload a photo on a personal blog and in five minutes it could be highly popular."

    Each company has foreseeable issues. With Identified, the ranking system is bound to be criticized: someone who went to a state school and worked at a lesser-known company is often a better fit for a job than the sparkling Harvard grad. For RNKD, the onus is on participating brands: if the rewards they offer to their most loyal consumers aren't very good, the impetus to share photos is gone. What's more, similar ideas have failed. Blippy, an app that connected to users' credit cards to share info on their purchases, grabbed headlines only to end up going nowhere.

    Both businesses face a larger challenge: Will enough people be willing to share everything from academic awards to the brand of boxers they wear? The corporations that end up involved with these sites hope so. And if the very concept of over-sharing continues to fade away, both startups could stand to gain a lot.