The online identity-credentialing space could properly be described as “nascent”, but there are a few companies actively hocking some sort of verified-identity badge. What makes Honesty Online different?
I’d love to see an Honesty Online credential on every user’s profile on every dating site, social network, job-site, and personal web-page out there. But a vision for broad adoption doesn’t make us different.
What makes us different is that to foster broad adoption of a user-centric service, we take a partner-centric approach. (By “partner” I mean any site that integrates with Honesty Online to allow their users to embellish their user-profile with an Honesty Online credential.) After all, social interaction on the Internet is still organized into a mosaic of individual, more-or-less autonomous websites. The user experience within a given dating site, for example, focuses on interactions with the other users of that site. A dating site is not merely a value-add on top of some ubiquitous Internet dating infrastructure. And won’t be for some time to come.
We recognize that our contribution to online social interaction, which is to promote a community of trust, works best within a given partner site’s community. And we recognize that a successful social-interaction website has created a successful social-interaction brand. We view as a privilege the opportunity to leverage our partners’ brand by being their identity-verification service of choice.
At Honesty Online, then, we recognize that our success depends on our partners. That has shaped our entire approach to our business, from the architecture of our software to the way we help partners position identity-verification on their site. In my next post I will write more about the specific ways Honesty Online helps partners create a community of trust efficiently, securely, and effectively.
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