OPW INTERVIEW - Feb 25 - BeehiveID is a new ID verification technology that is being used in online dating. It analyzes an individual's social media history, their friends and posts to determine whether a genuine person or a spambot is posting. TangoWire, a network of niche dating sites, has recently implemented BeehiveID technology. Here is our interview with Mary Haskett, who is the co-founder.
What is BeehiveID's founding story?
I met my co-founder, Dr. Alex Kilpatrick, when we worked together on a large national biometric identification project in the Middle East. We both felt that the way identity is managed online is fundamentally broken. On the Internet, your identity is tied to an email address. Individuals can have as many as they want at no cost. We wanted to see if the identity technologies could be used to verify that an online account was backed by a real person. We were accepted into the three month TechStars startup accelerator in Seattle and developed BeehiveID.
What's your industry specific solution for Internet daters?
We prevent online fraud. BeehiveID combs through the data on social sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. All of the posts, messages, uploaded photographs, likes, etc. create an interconnected graph of data, which we sort through to find the patterns real people display that fraudulent accounts do not. We use those patterns to generate the BeehiveID score, a measure of your proof of personhood. The score is modeled after a credit score, so a low score indicates a fake profile and a high score indicates the account is backed by a real person.
How much does it cost?
The cost is based on the number of identities validated per month. There is a free tier for very low volume users. The highest price (for low volumes) is $1 per verification but the price goes down rapidly as the number of transactions per month increases.
How is it better than the likes of a Rapsheets.com felony and sex offender check?
Those services are great if you are only looking for felony and sex offenders in the US. Facebook alone has more than one billion users worldwide and so we are able to provide identity verification for a much larger number of people. Integrating BeehiveID into a dating site is as easy as adding a button to the site, and having your identity verified requires only a single click.
How can the idating industry work with you?
We would love to talk to anyone who wants to take BeehiveID out for spin. We are happy to discuss options for trial periods.
