With BeenVerified, “Now You Can Trust Internet Profiles”!
VisionWiz writes a summary of start-up companies on his blog and posted a summary of BeenVerified, titled “BeenVerified—Now You Can Trust Internet Profiles”. I wanted to pass this along because I think that line makes a great point about BeenVerified. Prior to the launch of our service, it was virtually impossible for an online user viewing someone’s profile on a social network, dating site, or job site to know whether or not that person is a) who they claim and b) has accomplished what they claim. The reason Ross and I started this company is because we had gotten burned so many times hiring freelancers from all over the globe that turned out to be nothing but fraudsters.
In the last few years, the Internet has built up a huge infrastructure capable of handling millions of meetings, interactions, and discussions amongst people. Does anyone even remember when the web was called the “Information Super Highway”? For the most part, the web has become about people and meeting people for fun, romance, money and all the other things you do with people offline. The downside to all of this is that people can create a profile with a false identity instantly. It doesn’t even take stealing an identity, as much as just signing up for a service and filling in the blanks on your profile and then start sending it to people.
In the Sunday New York Times this weekend, they ran an article about the founder of a website called PlentyofFish.com which is a free online dating site. From the article, “the principal customer service that Plenty of Fish provides is responses to complaints about possibly fraudulent identities”. This is not surprising considering that the site lets anyone sign up and then anyone can post any info about they want. It is very easy to create a profile that says you are a 35 year old doctor from New York City but you really are a 15 year old from the Midwest. That is one of those things that doesn’t seem like a big deal, until you are the person who spent months investing in what you thought was a legitimate relationship.
So I thought the title to that blog posting, “Now You Can Trust Internet Profiles”, was great. It sums it all up, that NOW communities have an easy, free way for members to prove they are who they claim. Since BeenVerified is always voluntary, communities just need to offer it and let their users decide if it is beneficial. We started this for freelancers and job seekers but almost everybody and every community has a need for knowing the true identity of the people they are meeting online.
