Opinity, Inc., the first personal online and social reputation services company, today announced its launch of Opinity.com. Opinity.com is for anyone who buys from, sells to, or interacts with other individuals on the Internet.
While protecting privacy, Opinity gives Internet users the information they need to communicate, socialize, network, and transact business with confidence in their peers.
Using Opinity, individuals can review and rate the online behavior of others and evaluate and manage their own reputations, including controlling the level of disclosure of their personal data.
Businesses that partner with Opinity, such as auction, classifieds, forum, gaming, relationship, and social networking sites, can provide their customers with the information they need to make smart decisions in a safe environment, increasing customer confidence, repeat business, and referrals.
The Challenge
The problem that Opinity solves is a direct result of the anonymity that is a key feature of the Internet. Anonymity liberates users from the superficial limitations of appearance, such as age, ethnicity, and gender; however, it also conceals the identities of unscrupulous users.
Fraudulent or unethical transactions erode consumer confidence. Unprofessional behavior such as inefficiency or incivility drives customers to other venues almost as quickly. The current lack of integrated accountability promotes segregated, selective, site-specific behavior. Individuals and businesses need reputation and identity management across the Internet.
Opinity’s personal reputation services protect both customers and companies from the negative effects of anonymity without sacrificing the benefits of privacy.
“There is a larger issue at stake than consumer confidence and bottom line results,” said Dr. Ted Cho, Ph.D, chief executive officer of Opinity. “Lax security and increasing complaints of fraud invites the governments to intervene in Internet commerce in draconian ways, which wouldn’t be good for anyone.
“The industry’s goal should be effective, non-intrusive self-regulation. By partnering with Opinity, companies give their customers the ability to do quick reference checks on others with whom they may wish to interact or transact business. This lowering of risk, in turn, builds credibility and trust among customers and benefits all companies doing business on the Internet.”
What is Opinity?
Opinity is the first and only personal reputation service company to offer a consolidated view of various quantitative and qualitative data from multiple online and offline sources.
Any person with an email address or an online ID can participate. Opinity allows individual Internet users to view aggregated data on the past behavior and performance of their peers and to rate a peer’s reliability and trustworthiness.
Access to this information helps people make educated decisions about the individuals with whom they interact and transact business online. Opinity’s universal accountability model motivates Internet users to be professional and honest while discouraging unreliable and unethical behavior by people participating in Internet interactions and transactions.
How Opinity.com Works
Opinity consolidates quantitative and qualitative information associated with a person’s online identity(ies) on a wide range of sites.
A multi-dimensional online reputation is built from peer evaluations of a person’s behaviors, communications, manners, and interactions conducted over time under various IDs.
Quantitative Online Reputation measures include user activity ratings for specific events and multiple criteria rating analysis. Qualitative Social Reputation measures include general user reviews, social networking, personal information provided by the individual, and personal preferences. Opinity’s rating system is sophisticated yet easy to use.
All of the information is consolidated and analyzed before an individual is given an Overall Reputation Score. Designed with the help of a prominent scholar, the design criteria compute an individual’s overall reputation rating based on subcategory ratings that discourages invalid ratings and false IDs.
With Opinity’s patent-pending VeridemTM Technology, the authenticity of a person’s own online ID can be safely and securely verified by providing his or her specific UserID, and Password along with the website name where he or she is registered.
A user can verify two IDs and provide that information as proof that both are owned by the same person. The importance of verifying user identification (ID) is that it provides a much higher degree of certainty about the reliability and accuracy of user ID information. Therefore, for example, Opinity weights reviews for and by someone with a verified ID much more heavily than reviews done without ID verification.
With its universal and multi-dimensional approach, Veridem Technology, Scoring Algorithm, and Overall Reputation Score, Opinity is providing a unique solution to an important and complicated problem.
Murdok | Breaking eBusiness News
Your source for investigative ebusiness reporting and breaking news.
