What The Web Needs Now: A Profile of Profiles

Last week, Exxon had a
The first one we'll consider a natural anomaly of human behavior. After all, some people like to be punished. As for the other one, for 15 years or so, we've been satisfied with—well, tolerant of—the remote possibility we're being duped, if not constantly, then significantly more often than in real life.

Anonymity online might as well be enshrined alongside the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...or the right to be an anonymous jerk online.

Well, sometimes the anonymity is for protection, so it's kind of important, and efforts to squash anonymity are doomed to fail. On the flipside of that, though, are impersonators. Which of these John Mellencamp's official MySpace page, or one a fan has set up? At least Fake Steve Jobs was up front about the fakeness, but how easy is it to spoof anybody or any organization online?

Currently, the only recourse for companies like Exxon is either a legal one—in Exxon's case, they only needed an online press source to report the information—or a community of online investigators to call foul. One method is expensive and time consuming, and the other depends on a fluke chance somebody is aware and cares enough that somebody else is a fraud.

So what's needed is some method for verification, especially when it comes to social media. New social media applications pop up every day: new micro-blogging services, new social networks, new video sites, new blogging platforms, you name it. Along with those free new services will come not just posers and pranksters, but also sploggers and infringers trying to capitalize for whatever motivation suits them.

Recently, our
One notes right away the wiki model is still not perfect for authentication purposes, especially with a publicly editable profile of profiles, not if you need something absolutely rock solid. Right, and it won't be perfect based on that, but the community could, just like they've done with Wikipedia and IMDB, create a vast and likely accurate database of profiles in a relatively short amount of time.

And that's when we bring in the business side of this, which is...

Stage Two, Official Profile Lock-In: Once the community has formed its profile of profiles database, the companies and/or personalities involved have a chance to make a final edit and lock it in as the complete list of their official online communication channels. How do we go about authenticating it is the actual company or person seeking to lock in that information? We charge them, of course, a subscription fee. I figure no imposter will pony up actual money to secure their kicks of pretending to be somebody else. For so much a month or year, profiles can be locked in and are no longer community maintained—unless the subscription lapses, and then all bets are off, which becomes motivation itself to renew. Locked-in profiles then can only be edited by those officials in charge of them.   

The only remaining issue is blog comments, and I include this under the paid services part of the proposal because the wiki section would be primetime for abuse in this regard. I was proud of myself the day Sir Tim Berners-Lee told me in the comments section below an article I wasn't quite grasping his semantic web concept . How do I know it was the TBL? Well, um, he sounded really smart and talked over my head the whole time. The profile of profiles concept could allow Tim, or others to include how they present themselves in blog comments. However, there's no control for this in the wild, and posting your preferred commentary handle could only be further abused, and perhaps more effectively abused, by imposters. Another possible service presents itself in the form of authenticated comment handles, perhaps a line of code they could purchase or be issued that says, officially, "This is the real me commenting." That might take some technological wizardry to pull off, though.

Okay, readers, how am I doing on this concept? What's wrong with it? How could it be better? Is it worth a shot or am I kicking dirt out in left field?