Like the plot for this film, identity as an issue seems to crop up every couple of years.  Like the critics’ opinions on Mr. Neeson’s latest adventure, there’s a mixture of responses as to what the answer to the tricky issue of identity and identity theft ‘should’ be.

What is clear is that there are a number of commercial and large-scale projects ongoing around the world that are trying to address this in a concerted fashion; far more concerted it has to be said than in previous years.  What is interesting is looking at why this is happening and what people feel about this.  There’s no doubt that with the increase in life online, there’s a battle for ownership of identity.

Money Never Sleeps?

Like all consumer technology advances these days, two of the main drivers in the consumer space when it comes to identity seem to be from Facebook and Apple.  Did you miss those?  You may well have done.  Recently, Apple godfather Steve Jobs announced in the iPad 2 launch event that there were now something in the region of 200 million credit cards stored in the iTunes/App Store.  A financial link to a user is obviously an incredibly powerful way of validating who that person is (unless the card is stolen, in which case, that identity will either be short-lived or the person using it to purchase goods or services will soon be relocating to a secure facility).  Given the fact that less than 25% of people alive today have a bank account, this isn’t necessarily the best way of validating identity.

At the same time, in late February, Facebook rolled out Facebook Comments.  Billed as an attempt to enable sites to clean up their comment spam, those wishing to comment on an article with Facebook Comments enabled now have to sign in either using Facebook Connect or Yahoo! ID.  This obviously impacts on whether or not you’d wish to associate yourself with a comment on the site.  With over 550 million users, one would think that this identity provision would scale.  Facebook is obviously keen for people to be who they say they are, as advertising revenue increasingly funds its growth and success and the value behind that is the real-life data gathered in the biggest Truman Show experiment ever.

Both of these models seem based on the individual as a consumer and the value of that consumer to the ecosystem around the devices (in Apple’s case) or the platform (in Facebook’s case).  The first is tapping in to the cash that can be directly extracted from the consumer through providing very simple one-click verification of a transaction, however small.  The second is tapping into the value around the transactions – both financial and interaction-based – that the consumer undertakes and how that impacts on their friends, family and associates.

Face/Off?

Whilst not describing themselves as identity solutions, the implicit aspect is that this is what they are intended to be.  But these systems are built on transactions – What do I buy? What am I commenting on? – inside their own ecosphere.  This isn’t useful outside of that particular walled garden – there’s no personal continuity presented; how someone acts and the persona they are on Facebook may be completely different from whom they are at work.  Indeed, again, people are modifying their behavior when it comes to commenting using Facebook Comments.

Both solutions seem to be changing habits and activity (buying more things, commenting less) online, rather than driving understanding of what people actually need to do (have control over my credit card spending, making an anonymous snarky comment about something to let off steam right now).  This is forcing change on people through a technology service dependent on the moral structure of the service provider.  Many people feel fine about this; they live their lives in public and don’t understand why people might not wish to do the same as a default.  Even reading articles about being stalked on FourSquare don’t seem to deter them.  The problem is that when choice seems to be taken out of the equation as controls get more and more confusing for normal people, the default setting of privacy becomes ‘off’ because it’s too hard to set to ‘on’ and there’s an assumption that if something happens, it will be resolved by the service provider.

Cue the Sun!

In a time when the US government is seeking to encourage people to have a unique online identity in order to interact with Government services online, and having recently sat down with both Jobs and Zuckerberg at lunch, the drive towards online identity is front of mind for Governments.  It’s not just the United States.

The question is, will the systems that are chosen (driven by commercial organizations) inevitably change the individual?  Will we all, like Liam Neeson, wake up one day from a coma to find out that our identity has been taken away from us?  Not by another individual, but by a system that has been introduced as ‘best fit’, that changes who we are by changing what we do because of the lack of flexibility and individual control that we have being represented by that identity system?

Let’s hope there’s enough time to think this through.  I may just have to go and see Unknown now to see how Hollywood has it ending.  I’m certainly hoping it’s more Truman Show than Brazil.

Here at Telnic over the past few months we’ve been working hard helping our newest partner Tong Ji Ming Lian (Beijing) Technology Ltd (TJML) get ready to launch their .tel services in China.  China is a quietly innovative country, building on centuries of ground-breaking invention. Culturally, China is on a fast-track to being the largest economy in the world, and naturally, international organizations are becoming increasingly focused on working to develop in this market. 

It is often the case that localization, which is difficult for large or global companies coming in to China to achieve without the benefit of significant local understanding, is the main cause of a quick or inevitable exit.  This results in a vacuum in which local companies can take the learnings from the solution, learn from its success in other countries, and deliver something that gains popularity within China through use of micro-innovation.

 This is exactly what .tel-only partner TJML is doing with the .tel platform in China.  TJML have taken the platform and are offering .tel services and registrations in Chinese, including enabling verification of ownership services and adding additional elements that will enable them to promote .tel widely.  They’ve already forged partnerships with media and telecommunications companies which, as far as we understand, will enable people to utilize their .tel domains as OpenID’s and log in to some of the more popular online services.

The team behind TJML are experts in the local market and we’re delighted that they’ve spent time really understanding the benefits of .tel and what’s required to make it a success in their local territory, from personalization aspects through to marketing and promotional activity and, importantly, those partnerships. 

The launch, in conjunction with TJML and the China TMT Business Association, is being held in Beijing on Monday 20^th September will be attended by our CEO, Khashayar Mahdavi, who will provide a short speech of thanks to all involved as well as provide Telnic’s view of what benefits .tel can bring to China, its residents and its climate of micro-innovation.  We’re delighted to be bringing .tel to China and providing the platform for its curious and talented developers to create new value around for the benefit of the Chinese people.

Moving from a web-view to a multi-modal view

The majority of the work done to date is with the traditional web and mobile web in mind.  To an extent, this has been driven by a requirement that .tel is still being perceived, purchased and utilized as a traditional domain.  This may be due to its relative ease of set-up and its pure functionality – that of providing information online in a basic format for easy discovery and access.  It can be set up in minutes, is accessible from mobile devices ‘out of the box’ and now, with the support of AdSense and TelAds, can provide a revenue stream in addition to the contact information displayed that many find easy and simple to action.

But this is not the ultimate vision of .tel.  The above functionality will be enhanced, tweaked and supported as we move forward of course.  However, the use of DNS for storing of that information is the power behind the vision for .tel.  As it’s stored as data, it can be accessed, manipulated and utilized by many means.  As can be seen from the applications we’ve developed for the iPhone and Android, .tel is the first domain that can be managed completely from mobile devices.  With the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Outlook applications, one can lookup contact information from the DNS without leaving your address book, and import it there and then also.  And through third party soft phone applications, the same can be done, enabling the global directory to serve really fast contact information that is updated in real time.

Moving from online to offline access

All of this is done with an internet connection.  We must remember however that there are instances where we may be without internet connectivity (my iPhone service drops out even at major London train stations) and many in other countries with either no or low access to the internet, either through coverage, government regulation or poverty.

This is where it becomes interesting.  With OAuth support, services can be linked together without having to share usernames and passwords, creating a strong bond which will then allow .tel and other services to interact.  This we know will help those in the community who are developing management solutions for .tel to provide a trusted online service and we hope deliver them much success.  But at the same time, it will enable ‘offline’ services to interact with .tel.

What do I mean by this?  There is a proof of concept running on Twitter (see http://twitter.com/2tel) at present which shows Henri Asseily and my .tel names being managed by Twitter, and the both of us looking up information from other .tel names.  OK, fine, Twitter is an online service.  But what we’re actually doing is managing our .tel names and looking up .tel information via the Twitter SMS gateway.  We’re simply using the Twitter service as a bridge at present to enable us to utilize their SMS gateway to do this.  It could quite easily be a stand-alone SMS gateway.  OAuth will therefore enable .tel owners who don’t have continuous access to the internet to manage their names, and enable those with no internet access at all to access real-time updates from .tel names via SMS.  The first top level domain you can access and update without an internet connection.

This is what excites me.  I have to admit, I’m excited because I came up with the idea.  But if I can come up with that idea (and I’m not a real technologist, I just like and talk about technology) then what can the real technologists come up with?  The future of OAuth and binding .tel names to SMS I think provides a significant opportunity to telecommunications companies to begin to offer these to their customers, and a compelling business model for them to embed these into their offerings.  There is a huge market out there of people who wish to be found online but don’t have access to the internet all the time; India is just one of those markets and virtually all communication is done by SMS or mobile.

Moving towards a single uniform identity that you can own

At the same time, OpenID will also provide a compelling case for .tel to start to become used as an identifier for people online.  Many people don’t have the skills or desire to build a website of their own.  They use free services – Blogger, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook – to communicate with people when they want to (as well as still SMS, which remains the biggest surprise to mobile companies who never expected it to be successful as a communications tool).  But at the same time, we increasingly see that individuals need a place they can ‘own’ online – the ‘go to’ resource so that, if they leave one or more social networks, they won’t lose their ‘social graph’ (or, in non-jargon, the friends they really want to keep in touch with whom they re-discovered through the social network).  Additionally, the pervasiveness of these services and networks is leading to complexities in remembering usernames and passwords for all of these services (especially if security is front of mind).  OpenID makes a .tel domain the username that people can utilize to sign in to other services.  It then provides one place to bind all services together, and also an increase in the ability for people to utilize their .tel names more than just as a web address to give to people.  Sure, you can get a free OpenID from third-party service providers, but you’re back to the same problem; how long can they continue to provide this as a free service, or as a service at all, without a revenue stream?  With .tel becoming an OpenID provider, you own your domain – it’s not yourname.openidprovider.com, it’s simply yourname.tel.

So I believe the next six months will open up the ability for existing owners to re-engage and potential owners to re-evaluate .tel as more than just a web-based service, and I’m looking forward to seeing the developments that existing members of the community and new participants will develop.