Manage your online identity.

Here at claimID, we’re constantly trying to find ways to add small bits of technology and standards to our existing code. We’ve had XFN built into our links from the beginning, but that functionality has been hidden behind our “advanced” tab whenever you’re creating or editing a link for your claimID page.

Now - we’ve invoked some of the latent power in this XFN and have auto-added rel=”me” to any link that is verified in our system (via MicroID). As new verified claims are added to your accounts, they will also be marked with rel=”me” and be compatible with the recent discussions around the Open Social Web and microformats.

XFN and rel=”me”

Identity consolidation is something we’re only beginning to tap into. As the web becomes more programmable and mashable, XFN, along with other microformats and small building blocks like MicroID, begin to show their potential.

Here is a short section from the XFN pages at GMPG:

Identity
Me is used to indicate that the link points to a site for which you are responsible. This is useful when pointing to various profiles on social-networking sites, for example, or when pointing between two different blogs run by the same person. Note that use of this value is exclusive of all other XFN values; thus, you cannot declare rel="me co-resident" even though it is to be hoped that you are in fact co-resident with yourself.

This addition is only a small thing, in the grand scheme, but another solid piece of our commitment to education and advocacy with regard to online identity.

An example of how this is powerful

Plaxo’s open source Open Social Graph (e.g. Online Identity Consolidator). It spiders out from a source URL based on the XFN it finds. Then it builds the graph and reports back. Click on a few of the links below to see it in action - with the source URLs being our newly automated rel=”me” pages at claimID:

• habib - text, json, xml
• terrell - text, json, xml
• jsmarr - text, json, xml

More Discussion

Further reading around the idea of an open portable social network:

• http://blog.claimid.com/2007/09/claimid-supports-the-open-social-web/
• http://www.plaxo.com/info/opensocialgraph
• http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/
• http://www.sixapart.com/about/news/2007/09/were_opening_th.html
• http://opensocialweb.org/

Today, Joseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, and Michael Arrington released A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web, calling for services to support a more open approach to identity information. The document is simple and effective:

We publicly assert that all users of the social web are entitled to certain fundamental rights, specifically:

• Ownership of their own personal information, including:
  • their own profile data
  • the list of people they are connected to
  • the activity stream of content they create;
• Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and
• Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.

Sites supporting these rights shall:

• Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list, and the data that’s shared with them via the service, using a persistent URL or API token and open data formats;
• Allow their users to syndicate their own stream of activity outside the site;
• Allow their users to link from their profile pages to external identifiers in a public way; and
• Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on their site, using the same external identifiers made available for lookup within the service.

Not only are we proud to support this bill of rights, but I’m happy to report that we’re also in compliance with it.  At ClaimID, we’ve long innovated in the open-identity space; our work with MicroID and our deployment of OpenID-based social networks stand in evidence.  At the same time, we’ve always respected your identity rights, giving our users control to do what they’d like with their data.  We’ve always known that being open and forthwith is the right approach, and we’re certainly pleased to see these values gaining so much traction.