Is user verification an essential part of your business?

Many websites rely on their users' identity to be verified in order to create trust, especially when it comes to the exchange of money or even to ensure physical safety.

If you follow any of the major tech blogs you will have heard about the nightmares that Airbnb, the highly valued online marketplace for peer-to-peer travelling, have had recently. Airbnb enables people to earn money by renting out extra space, and offers travellers a viable alternative to hotels and hostels. However, after one blogger’s flat in San Francisco was ransacked by a “guest” concerns over safety and security were raised by the community.

Airbnb have rapidly added a load of new security features to their platform, including our very own Webcam Snapper app to help validate user identity.

Snapper is just one ingredient though so I thought it would be interesting to list the forms of verification they are using to build up a comprehensive user trust profile.

1. Webcam Photos
   This is ideal for helping you build trust that your users are who they say they are. A webcam photo taken whilst the user is logged into their account is far more likely to be authentic. Photos can also be date stamped and you can also request the user holds up an ID cards, driving licenses or passport to add further proof.
    
2. Validating a Phone Number
   Entering your mobile number and being sent a code automatically via SMS to input is pretty simple but very effective. Of course not all mobile numbers lead to trackable contracted folks but having a verified contact number is helpful.
    
3. Connecting your Social Network Profiles
   Over the past couple of years we have seen the rise of social logins where users can create accounts on websites and apps by authorising facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. to act on their behalf. Originally this was designed for convenience and end user security. However this use case is all about extending the digital footprint of a person for trust verification purposes. LinkedIn is an especially interesting use case here as an account on this platform very much places the user profile in a real life context.
    
4. User on User Reviews
   The power of comments from total strangers has meant big business for the likes of Amazon, Apple, eBay and Trip Advisor and this is no different. Over time the web has built up a degree of community, camaraderie and social responsibility amongst total strangers with a unified goal. The principle being that if we collectively share our thoughts and experiences we can all benefit from better products and services, as well as avoiding disasters!
    

Taken one by one none of the above (sadly even Snapper) can realistically say they crack the issue of online trust. However as a collective they build a compelling picture of a person that would be very hard to fake. Dodgy users are clearly not going to try and follow these steps which will weed them out as potential people to avoid.

In that regard Airbnb can say with some conviction that home owners enter into deals at their own risk. The vast majority of good apples won’t have any issues with that.

It's the Third Thursday of the month. David was a man of few words this month, mostly because he is knackered out by baby Max!

David auditions for Scrubs but was told they'd filled the role of cleaner

Other links referenced...

• Webcam Snapper on Dailybooth
• Sport Industry Awards
• Exchange Away
• Hoxton Hotel £1 Sale
• Jobs at Codegent!

Well, that was quite a year... It is curious how the days go by so fast yet January seems like such a damned long time ago. It’s been a busy one for us and in true schedule-filling style we thought we’d give you a little synopsis of ‘la dolce vita’ at Codegent in the year 2010.

The New Year heralded the birth of the Codegent Apps team, headed up by Mark and Luke, to focus on the development of web applications. And they’ve been busy bees, launching webcamsnapper (as seen on Brizzly, Twitpic, Daily Booth), Twilert and Twitbooth and developing getDash which is due for launch in early January. We even brought Dustin Curtis over from the States to work with us on the interface development of getDash back in March.

Mark has also been making his voice heard around the globe, invited to attend South by South-West in March as part of the UK Digital Mission. He’s also been out and about in London, speaking at live events and hobnobbing with the bright young things of the internet.

On the agency side there have been launches a-plenty for clients old and new: a few stand outs include sites for the British Library, 4 for the Mental Health Foundation, The Hoxton and Searcys. We’ve run Facebook campaigns for Pepsi and built a healthy collection of iPhone and iPad Apps: you can get a bit more info on of this work on our portfolio. It’s also been another year of awards, with Tepilo and The Hoxton picking up silverware in the w3 Awards and nominations in the BIMAs.

We’ve been pretty busy too on the staff front with people coming and going. Lauren packed her bags and went off travelling, whilst Aidan finally caved in and joined us full-time along with Nor, Panu, Bruna, Agnieszka, Michael & Joseph – quite the band of merry men! The office is starting to get a bit full and it won’t be too long before we need to start thinking about a new home.

There have been weddings (Mr and Mrs Kane and Mr and Mrs Tangnoi), babies (David and Jane – due in about a week), a new swanky office in Bangkok and I got another bike.

So Father Time marches on. Au revoir 2010, I think you could say it has been a successful one. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

Brizzly is a popular third-party Twitter & Facebook interface, built by Thing Labs, that launched in 2009. We caught up with them at the recent Chirp Twitter conference in San Francisco and demoed our Webcam Snapper application - which they loved! (a demo of the Snapper in our Twitbooth website is in the video above)

So without further ado they bought the widget and integrated it straight into Brizzly. So far it has proved to be a hit with the users as well.

This is the second large platform we have integrated Snapper with after White Label Dating in Autumn 2009. We are also talking to the major Twitter photo sharing websites as well so stay posted for more updates soon!