Zac Echola is muffin but trouble

Uncategorized: Trip report: claimID

Published on 03/03/07
by Zac Echola

claimID

From here:

A claimID is essentially a profile. Some people have called it a “link resume.” It is a place for you to show the world the stuff about you - your hyperlinked identity. To get started, all you need to do is start saving the links that make up you online identity to claimID. Once you save the links, you will have a public claimID page that you can use as an OpenID, a homepage, or whatever else you might like.

claimID, like most Web 2.0 services has a simple, to-the-point interface and design. Registering took one mashed link and a few quick keystrokes in basic registration fields, nothing superfluous or unneeded. An activation email came seconds after I finished registering, which was nice. I hate waiting.

It’s free and free of advertising, which I’m fairly certain is a recipe for ending up in TechCrunch’s deadpool pretty quickly.

What I like

After logging in, I was able to put together a simple summary of my Web presence in under 5 minutes. Again, the simple AJAX site speeds up this process of entering and organizing links tremendously.

claimID is exactly what it says it is: hyperlinks. You enter and organize hyperlinks by and about you. And that’s about it, aside from a picture and a short description of yourself.

From what I’ve seen and read, claimID has done a good job with SEO and has some serious Google juice, which would make having a page here great for job seekers. We’ll see where my claimID ranks ends up for a Google search for “Zac Echola” soon.

It’s a valid openID URL.

What I don’t like

Tagging. The tagging system seems tacked on. The one thing I’ve always hated about tagging is remembering my tags. claimID should work on suggesting tags I’ve already used as I type them.

My other gripe is a small one: I’d like to be able to change the colors of the page a bit. If I was a web savvy lumberjack, I’d be turned off having my picture in a baby blue box.

It’s almost too simple. It would be nice if it was a bit more dynamic. I wish I could pull in feeds from other sites that I frequent, instead of having to sit around updating it all the time.

Final thoughts

It’s not much more than a glorified bookmark folder labeled “crap about me.” Bookmarks serve their purpose, but this isn’t really anything too special. I can’t see it becoming the next email, as has been suggested.

As I see it, it’s social networking without the network. Type your claimID on your resume or email it to your grandma.

The Last Word

Hype.

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