ClaimID - Claim what’s yours
Have you ever Googled your name only to find a slew of stuff that isn’t yours. The internet being what it is, doesn’t account for people having the same name, someone just claiming to be you, or various other mentions of your name. Enter - ClaimID. Whether it’s to protect yourself from being associated with someone else’s stuff, keep your name clean, or just organize your online identity, ClaimID has a set of tools that could help.
Based on a del.icio.us type engine, ClaimID acts like an identity bookmarking service. Just grab a bookmarklet, start claiming your stuff, and it’s stored in a personal area of their site (www.claimid.com/Your_Name). You can upload a photo, add/delete folders, and maintain your profile. When adding the links, there are a special set of tools to “claim” the link. By adding tags, saying “by who”, and “about who”, you can effectively add a full description to any link. You could also effectively debunk a set of links by labeling them “not me”. All this happens in a matter of seconds with little effort.
Besides just allowing you to claim links, the site boasts several help articles to get you going, and help you track your online identity. Plus, the “Cache” feature automatically creates a backup or your page, code and all. This could really come in handy for that online news article that is bound by a shelf life.
The bottom line is, the service is useful and easy. I can see people adding this to their MySpace pages and sending ClaimID links out with their resumes. At the very least, it’s an easy way to catalog and manage your online identity.
March 17th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Wow, that’s pretty neat. I especially like the ‘not me’ features.
Great blog by the way, Lyle. I’ve grabbed your RSS.
March 17th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Knew it wouldn’t take you long…
March 18th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Lyle,
Thanks for trying it out and for the nice words!
We *are* hoping it raises the level of awareness around how our online personas are presented. If you have any comments/suggestions - let us know. We’re still slowly adding features hopefully without making things any more complicated.
Useful and easy is the way.
Thanks.
March 18th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Terrell,
Thanks for the comment. As you can see, I’m just getting started here.
I am really impressed how easy your service is to use. Especially in beta. I didn’t find any bugs, everything went very quickly, I was up and running in less than 5 mins.
Great stuff, the “Cache” feature is Aces. I wonder if there is a way (aside from the usual SEO) to get these pages to rank higher when someone is searching for your name. It’d be awesome if everytime someone searched for me, they got my ClaimID page first (or near the top). I guess we just have to hope the site gets plenty of high profile links.
I think it will be especially useful for projects I worked on, but am not associated with. Maybe if you guys had a special “Portfolio” folder with screenshots, etc. for designers/developers. Or break it down like (Mentions of me, Stuff I did, Stuff I participate in, Not me, total farse) or something like that.
I’m anxious to see how this evolves.
March 20th, 2006 at 10:47 am
Lyle,
All those things are possible (except screenshots) with the structure that’s there today.
Group the things that make sense to you together, and name them well. Give them descriptions that explain what you want said about them. Use the tags or colors or group names/descriptions to gather them in whatever way you want.
I’m hoping to post soon with some examples of people who are using claimID ‘well’ to give everyone a little better overview of what is possible.
Terrell