hmmmm… yet another Social something! Social networking, Social peeing, Social this and Social that! Whatever next!!
But….
The power of end users who are doing things and the power of internet and computers to be able to utilize these actions, turn them into a useful set of data and then re-use it for other users is a nice of way progressing internet!
First time in human history (that we know of 🙂 ) we can use our collective intelligence. We just need a way to mine and use that intelligence!
So here comes Social Authentication!
What is it: Its an infrastructure to enable end users (bloody powerful force I say..) to tell us what is good what is not! As simple as that! You go to a site and you rate it. You rate whether that site is a subject matter expert on the content it is displaying or whether they are a good merchant that has done things right for you or not. Now you can learn from the experiences of others in this social network! Its a social network for Authentication!
Why does it matter: Well, because we are now generating more content than ever before! Great that we can search thru this content but WE NEED HELP!!!! Having 10BillionZillionTrillion web pages is no good unless I can find what I want! Yep its well and good that search engines have some way of creating relevant indexing, but I rather know what other users have thought about a site than a formula of a search engine! The power of end user’s say is infinitely more valuable in deciding the relevancy of a web site/page than any known formula today! Being able to identify top rated sites/pages by users is valuable, saves times and gets the user exactly what they need! Thats worth something! When you go to a site seeing what other users’s have said and rated the site with is also a great indicator that will play a role in the way that end users make their decisions.
Social Authentication is the way in which we can make Internet more relevant!
Thanks
Melih