(this post has an update at Categories of virtual Identity II)

One of my thesis proposal questions was “How do people deal with online identity, and how can the problem of both trust and a fragmented identity be solved” Answers started to roll in with this presentation about identities, it was almost a visual explenation of my thoughts. When I started searching I found some interesting links. Here’s a little report of my journey (which can be followed on del.icio.us)

Sxip and Sxore

Not entirely getting there story already but lets just copy and paste it from their website: Sxip:

the Simple, eXtensible Identity Protocol is the power behind Identity 2.0. SXIP is a simple mechanism that gives users control over their online identities and provides websites with the ability to construct rich user-centric relationships.

An intresting wordpress plugin build by Sxip is sxore, it allows you (and your visitors) to have the same identity on multiple weblog comment posts. Or as their website points it:

Sxore is an identity and reputation system for blog authors, readers and commenters. By acting as an intermediary between blog posts and comments, sxore provides a framework of identity for participants in the blog dialog.

There are still some weak points, like the storage of comments, and the redirection to another page to post, but the fact that I could use my Flickr screen name to get an thumbnail at my comment made it all up.

ToWatch: OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0
ToRead:, Digital ID: How are you managing?, The semantic web, digital identity, and Internet governance
Weblogs: Identity 2.0

Gravatar

Gravatar Is a wordpress plug-in that checks the email address you use in your comments with the gravatar database and returns (if it’s exists) the linked image. or in their words:

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites.

The gravatar gives you a feeling of being one and the same person in different places on the web. And is a simple answers on the problem of the (feeling of a) fragmented identity. A critical point could be the extern hosting of the gravatar images (as you can see on this gravater plugin blog)

Opinity

Opinity is the first attempt that i came across, that tries to combine all of your identities (flickr, myspace, del.icio.us etc) on one page. Is has a build in check to prove you are the owner (or at least have the passwords) of those identities. Thanks to the possibility to show your personal flickr and del.icio.us feeds you could say its a builderfriendly version of the personal portals some technical wizards have build. I think that if they keep on building, and add more websites and communities to verify with, it would be a great help to create a stable online identity. Check my personal profile here.

ToRead:Claim je identiteit, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, You Are What You Post
Rivals:claimid.com, iKarma, Superglu
(thanks for Ymerce for these links)

ClaimID

ClaimID Looks a bit like Opinity but has not the possibility to have proven or unproven ID’s (there is no need to let ClaimID login in your websites) And thereby claimID doesn’t give you a real proof of who you are, I could have as easily made a Jan Peter Balkenende ID as I could have made my own. But proof is not where it’s about on ClaimID. It’s more as an easy way of making your own personal portal into your online world.

ClaimID is a service that lets you manage your online identity. With claimID, you can track, classify, annotate, prioritize and share the information that is about you online, giving people a better picture of your online identity and influencing search engines. ClaimID gives people, rather than a search engine, control over their identity.

The problem hereby is that it’s true that ClaimID gives you the possibility to manage your online identity, but that it doesn’t change the results of a search engine.(As also augmented in their faq) So I think it comes close to a startpage where to subject is you. An easy to build person portal, without any claim for “real” truth. They give how ever the awareness of how important it is to know and “control” your personal information.
ToRead: Identity and the Web: Information Science Must Pay Attention, claimID Best Practices

Sites of Interest

Microsoft Identity Metasystem:

The Identity Metasystem is an interoperable architecture for digital identity that assumes people will have several digital identities based on multiple underlying technologies, implementations, and providers. Using this approach, customers will be able to continue to use their existing identity infrastructure investments, choose the identity technology that works best for them, and more easily migrate from old technologies to new technologies without sacrificing interoperability with others.

Blog of interest is the Identityblog written by one of the co-writers of laws of (online) identity the research report where Infocards is being developed on.

EBay Feedback

The Feedback Forum is the place to learn about your trading partners, view their reputations, and express your opinions by leaving feedback on your transactions. Such member-to-member comments help the millions of buyers and sellers in the community build trust and share their trading experiences with others.

According to research the eBay reputation is already worth 7% of eBay’s trading value. On this subject many papers are written: The Value of Reputation on eBay: A Controlled Experiment and others I found on scholar.google.com (still reading them, probably expect a post later)

Intresting WikiPages on this subject :Online identity, Digital identity and Reputation management.