Unit Structures Fred Stutzman’s thoughts about information, social networks and technology.

claimID – accepting addresses for invites

I’m really pleased to announce that we’ve more or less hit our development goals for claimID, and we’re going to be giving away invites to the service within the next two weeks. We’re closely heeding Michael Arrington’s instant classic of a column, Don’t Blow Your Beta. This means we’re taking extra time to test and test, refactor and refactor, and make sure every element in the UI just makes sense.

A number of you have asked me what claimID is, and in case you’re interested, here’s a little taste:

claimID is a service that lets people track, classify, annotate, prioritize and share the information that is about them online. We’ve all met someone who is annoyed, uncomfortable, or even generally nonplussed with the way their identity is represented in search. Search engines are good at finding exactly what people search for; the only problem is our identity is anything but exact. What if a person searches for you and doesn’t use the name you publish under, or they don’t know your maiden name? And what if there is actually really great stuff about you on the web that doesn’t have your name attached to it (like a news story about a project you worked on)? On top of that, how do people know which of the results are actually about you, and which are about the person or persons who share your name? Why do you have to lose out when someone searches for you (especially if the person searching for you is a potential employer, mate, or an opinionated family member)? There’s more of us appearing online each day, and there’s more stuff about us online than ever before. The reality is we need to be proactive about our online identities, we need to invest time in tracking and protecting them, and we need highly usable, accessible services like claimID to streamline the process.

That’s a taste of what we are – so now, what we aren’t. We’re not a verified identity service, we’ll leave that to openID and Sxip, and we’re not a wisdom-of-crowds or social recommender service like Opinity or iKarma. Our team is completely dedicated to solving the unique and very real problems people have with the information that is about them online. The reason we think this idea works is because we’ve made an accessible solution to an inaccessible problem. Look around you, poll the room to see who is truly comfortable with how their identity is represented in a search engine. Isn’t it time we started doing something about it?

As I previously stated, we’re getting quite close to the beta launch. If you’re interested, browse to claimID.com and leave us your address. We’ll be in touch. This is about to get fun.

First Post!,

I will check this out later, but I am sure that if Fred is involved it will be cool,

Andrew

Excellent – sounds like it will potentially solve a lot of problems. Will it play nice with any of the social networks out there? What sort of Web standards is it using.

BK – Thanks for the link and comment. claimID is web-standards based, including built-in microformat support. We strongly believe in standards so that individuals can transport and share their identity, reputation or whuffie (what have you) from claimID.

Sounds really interesting, Fred. I’m leaving my address, and hoping to get a sneak peak soon. It’s something that’s I’ve thought a lot about (at least, the “virtual identity” stuff I’ve thought a lot about) and this new twist on it is really intriguing. Looking forward to seeing what you’ve cooked up.