As we increase our personal openness and honesty via social media, so too are we appraised more as data-mining never had the chance to go so deep.

Californian data-mining company Rapleaf are at the bleeding edge of social media monitoring (SMM). Short version: they track everything about you online – every comment, every review, every status update, every tweet, every contact, every friend and they appraise you via some massive algorithms.

This pretty much promises to offer the Holy Grail for advertising online where uber-relevant adverts are delivered to you and your peer group. But Rapleaf are taking that peer group and going further than ads – they’re suggesting credit ratings! A ‘prospect’ might fail a credit score rating but their closest online friends are quite affluent, so perhaps some extra leeway should be given (they wouldn’t see you on the street would they?).

Given that we know all this, how long before people start spamming the system? In a view to becoming more credible, will the scumbag hook up with the solicitor, doctor and police officer? If an online friend will upset your credit score, would you oust them? Will this lead to appraising people who ‘poke’ you to see if they lift or drop your ‘perceived value’ to the market (think mortgage providers for a start)?

If you thought social media was free, you’re wrong. Facebook is inching toward its big payday and Rapleaf and others are offering tools that help social media grease the skids nicely.

Cartoon: the infamous “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” by Peter Steiner originally published by The New Yorker in 1993.