Connect.Me Social Vouch-a-thon (W5F)

Session Topic: Connect.me Social Vouching

Convener: Drummond Reed

Notes-taker(s): Judi Clark

Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered:  reputation, trust framework, social vouching

Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:

Notes source: http://digitalidcoach.com/2011/10/iiw-xiii-connect-me-and-the-social-vouch-a-thon/

Connect.me is a socially verified reputation system in which people vouch for other people using customizable tags. This is called social vouching. The whole system is based on it, so someone has to vouch for another person to join the network. The purpose of this session was to help a group of people get their initial vouch and learn how to use this new network.

It works in conjunction with/on top of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you follow or are connected to someone in one of those networks, they show up in your network as someone you can offer a “vouch” for. For example, I vouched for Drummond with tags “digital identity” and “trust frameworks,” which are both areas that he has done considerable work in for years. I also vouched for Kaliya (one of the organizers of this event) with tags “identity” and “digital identity” because she’s known widely as “identity woman.”

People can refer to others on this site by their reputation, as represented by their tags (what people know them for). One of the tags I’m known for is “early adopter.”

Much of this session was working through some of the user interface glitches and idiosyncracies. This was a great opportunity to see how things work with more people doing the testing. Once we got past some of the early work-in-progress, it was clear that there is a good networking resource in the making.

For anyone at IIW who wants to start using the network, you can either: 1) have anyone that is already using it — and that you have a link to on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn – vouch for you (and then you’ll be sent a custom invitation link), or if you’re not at IIW, 2) go to http://connect.me, sign up, and then either give the username you registered to Drummond (or send it to him at drummond — at — connect — dot — me ) and he will vouch for you as an early adopter to get you into the beta.