Sustinion is an experiment. An implementation of an idea of mine:

an idea to make approval on the Internet more considered, more volatile and yes, even limited.

Sustinion allows you to state opinions and/or state your support for opinions. In return it promises to keep you up to date on the things which you are really interested in, maybe even find out what that really is.

What is the catch, the new idea?

The new idea (as far as I was able to verify) is the way approval is processed on Sustinion.

More considered

Instead of counting clicks on ‘Like’, ‘Fav’ and ‘+1’, at Sustinion approval is stated in a more detailed way. It is more about ‘How much do I like this?’, ‘How much do I agree?’. This translates into assigning a specific amount of free Opinion Quanta (OQ) to an opinion when supporting it. On top of that, this approval decays with time.

Sure, a single click poses a lower cognitive burden and the predominate mass of ratings on the internet tends to show this low cognitive investment. We ‘Like’ the funny cats pictures as much as the dogs pictures (more or less ;). That’s fine. But we ‘Like’ the deeply insightful blog post or really important information the same way as the funny cats and dogs. Really?!?

More volatile

Do you remember your favorite tweets from the past? What did you ‘Share’? How many ‘Likes’ and ‘Favs’ did you give away? More importantly: do you revoke the ‘Likes’, ‘Favs’ and ‘Shares’ in light of new facts or when you change your own opinion on something? When revisiting your static history of approvals are they meaningful to you today?

At Sustinion approval decays over time. At first the assigned OQ amount is transfered towards the opinion then those OQ gradually flow back to you. The end result is a current view of your approval and a current view of overall support for an opinion. Both evolving over time and both decaying if not reinforced.

More limited

Your OQ balance at Sustinion is limited. This means that you have to distribute your OQ among the opinions you agree with. Due to the back and forth flow of OQ your current agreement with opinions is limited time wise, too. It decays.

The unlimited amount of virtual ‘Likes’ cheapens every single one of them. Attention on the other hand is profoundly limited: a reality-real resource. We gauge its value based on its authenticity. Now, how valuable should a ‘Like’ be if it is one of a few dozens given away per day, day after day? On the other hand, how much more valuable is a rating when it is reinforced over some time?

Less wordy please…

Sustinion uses scarcity and decay as a way to give more meaning and thus value to your ratings and approvals. In contrast to the current mainstream rating concepts which devalue single activities by not limiting their amount and timely validity

Sustinion provides a way for us to benefit from ratings and approvals by giving them important real world properties.

You can try it out here => www.Sustinion.com

Cheers
Radek