Braintree is ramping up its mobile presence thanks to its recent purchase of Venmo. Using the peer-to-peer payment technology, Braintree is creating an in-app customer identity network that can be used to buy goods across iOS apps. Read more »
Ever wanted a single app that check you into any airline or an app that could aggregate healthcare data from multiple doctors and insurance companies? Apigee’s new API Exchange aims to make those apps possible. Read more »
The OneAPI Exchange will get carriers into the identity verification business, but more significantly it’s the first carrier developer service designed to work universally across all carriers’ networks. Read more »
The media made a terrible error in identifying Ryan Lanza as the Sandy Hook shooter — a mistake amplified by social media. But while we may not be able to prevent these blunders happening elsewhere, we have to take responsibility for our own actions. Read more »
A Twitter user named @ComfortablySmug has been held up as a villain for posting fake news reports to Twitter, and his identity has been forcibly revealed by BuzzFeed — but is that, and all that it implies, an appropriate punishment for his alleged crimes? Read more »
Data from Disqus, which offers a comment-hosting service for websites, seems to show that the use of pseudonyms not only produces more comments, but also comments of higher quality. As interesting as the data is, however, it’s unlikely to settle the ongoing debate over online identity. Read more »
When it comes to the promise of data as the currency of the web, the current state of affairs has privacy advocates and many consumers up in arms. But it doesn’t have to be the one-sided affair it is today, in which companies have all the data and all the rights, and we shouldn’t have to be afraid of who’s doing what with our information. With laws, products, practices and education, data can become a far more valuable currency than cash ever was. Keeping that in mind, this research note examines five issues that must be addressed by policy makers and entrepreneurs so that they can deliver on our data-driven digital future. Companies mentioned in this report include Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The race to become the default identity platform for the social web continues to intensify, but while both Facebook and Google are determined to win and have substantial resources to throw at the problem, there are some compelling reasons to believe Twitter has the upper hand. Read more »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo talked about the company’s recent growth during an interview at the Web 2.0 conference, but he also made some strong statements about Twitter’s commitment to free speech and to defending the rights of its users against governments in Britain and the U.S. Read more »
4chan founder Chris Poole believes that users need a balance of anonymity and identity online, a strategy he hopes social networks will also adopt as a way to allow people to make mistakes online without having to worry about those transgression coming back to haunt them. Read more »
Why does Twitter allow users to have pseudonyms, while Google and Facebook require real names? Because Twitter realizes it can provide plenty of value for both users and advertisers without having to know your real name. On the social web, it’s all about reputation and influence. Read more »
Google chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview in Edinburgh on the weekend that Google is taking a hard line on the real-name issue with Google+ because it sees the social network as an “identity service” on which it can build other products. Read more »
Google’s requirement that users of Google+ be known by their real names has been the source of a firestorm of criticism since the launch of the network. But the recent launch of “verified” user accounts shows what could be a way out for the web giant. Read more »
Google+ users can under some circumstances access IM conversations of other Google users. The bug seems to be related to the way Google Talk is integrated within Google+. Google has said that it is addressing the issue, which only affects users of shared machines. Read more »
Our online presence defines much of our identity both personally and professionally, especially for web workers. But how much of your online identity is controlled by someone else? The Indie Web movement is primarily about ownership and control over your identity. Read more »
The pressure is on for Google to develop a social strategy. It should leverage the combination of +1 and its users’ Google identities to come from behind on the social graph. With the concept of identity, Google starts it’s social play from a much stronger position. Read more »
The Obama administration introduced its National Strategy on Trusted Identity in Cyberspace on Friday, and took pains to point out that this program will be led by the private sector, and isn’t some kind of Big Brother-ish, government-issued ID card everyone will be forced to use. Read more »
Former Twitter CEO Evan Williams breaks the important aspects of identity down into five distinct pieces, including authentication and personalization. But the reality is that what we mean by “identity” can change from moment to moment, and that may be the most difficult problem of all. Read more »
LinkedIn has launched a series of website plugins that effectively duplicate the features of the “open graph” platform Facebook launched last year — a move that throws the business-oriented network into what looks like head-to-head competition with Facebook for the clicks and identities of web users. Read more »
The issue of identity is challenging online and few have come up with solutions to help a single real-world person adopt multiple personas for their business and personal lives online. The CEO of UnboundID makes the case that your phone or cable company could do it. Read more »
An ambitious startup named Enole is trying to bring the spirit of OpenID to the mobile environment, by building a near-field communications (NFC) platform that developers can build on to get devices to carry their owner’s identity. It’s sort of like OpenID for your phone. Read more »
Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind the massively multiplayer — and massively popular — online game World of Warcraft, has touched off a firestorm of controversy in the gaming community by requiring that users divulge their real-world identities when they post comments in the company’s WoW forums. Read more »
Firefox has thrown down the gauntlet in the race to take charge of your online identity, saying it will add identity-management features to its browser, and hopes to build recommendation services into it as well. The move pits the browser’s open-source model against Facebook’s proprietary approach. Read more »
Making the choice between promoting your business using your own name or that of a company is a very personal decision that sometimes takes a lot of consideration. The most common option is to brand yourself under a company, which works well when your company name […] Read more »
