Make no mistake.  I am honored when people choose to endorse me on LinkedIn.  I appreciate them taking a few moments to click the button and send a message my way that they think I have a certain positive capability.  I always try to respond in kind.

However, LinkedIn could certainly take lessons from Connect.me, or better still, use Connect.me, when it comes to vouching for and cataloging a person’s capabilities.  Here are some deficiencies in the LinkedIn approach that are much better implemented in Connect.me:

Whom have I endorsed?  On LinkedIn, I have no way to review the people I have endorsed or what capabilities I have endorsed.  I would really like to step through a list of my contacts, see which ones I have endorsed, and for what.

Who has endorsed me? On LinkedIn, there is no way I have found to review a list of my contacts and know if they have endorsed me or what they have endorsed me for.

In your face, with limited information.  I resent that each time I access LinkedIn, I am presented with a grid of four people, each with one capability, asking for me to endorse them. There are two problems here.  First, I link to endorse people as a conscious action, not upon an impulse.  Second, I should like to consider multiple endorsements of a person, rather than just the one LinkedIn suggests.  This often results in a scattered sequence of individual endorsements, rather than a cohesive set of endorsements.

Ease of use.  When LinkedIn does suggest a person to endorse, I can’t easily go to his or her profile page to do a multiple endorsement set.  I must type in his or her name to reach the profile page.

Well, there my rant.  It’s doubtful that LinkedIn will listen to me … but hopefully they will fix their reputation system just the same.

 

Yesterday, my Identity was verified by the Tru.ly identity validation service.  With that in place, if your browser is equipped with a Tru.ly browser extension, you can visit me on Facebook or LinkedIn and see that I am tru.ly verified.

I think tru.ly faces an uphill battle to build critical mass both of people with tru.ly validated identities and of people who really care.  While that battle progresses, I’ll keep you updated as I learn more.

Last Thursday, I tried unsuccessfully to register for the new Identify Validation service provided by Tru.ly.  On Friday, I got a nice email from a Tru.ly representative, responding to my blog and Twitter posts, thanking me for my access attempt and inviting me to try again.

This afternoon, my registration effort was successful.  Tru.ly verified the bits of Identity information I provided, and issued my very own Tru.ly URL – tru.ly/mgd – plus the QR code included in this post and on the blog sidebar.

You can see my verification information by visiting tru.ly/mgd, by clicking on the QR code or by scanning the QR code with your mobile device.  It worked just fine on my iPhone using the QRReader app.

What does a Base Hit have to do with Identity Verification?

Since Spring Training has started in Arizona, baseball analogies came to mind.  I assigned my first failure at Tru.ly registration “Strike 1.”  I’ll call my current success a “base hit.” The registration worked, but I’m not really sure what its real value is yet.  We’ll have to wait awhile to see what brings me across home plate.

Over the past few years, I have been intrigued with the subject of Identity Validation – being able to determine, which a high degree of confidence, that a person is whom he says he is, prior to issuing Identity credentials to him.

Today, I became aware of Tru.ly, that promises to “[maximize] personal privacy by providing users with a single, verified identity on the internet.”  A lively Twitter conversation among Identity experts @dak3 @NishantK @paulmadsen and @iglazer convinced me that I should check it out.

But alas, when I tried to join Tru.ly (twice), I got this nasty error message:

My only comment is ARRGGGGGH! I guess I’ll try again tomorrow to join the latest service that promises to save the world.