One of the biggest problems surrounding Web 2.0 is identity. The fact that there may be 25 John Smith's in the world and dangerously so half of them claiming to be John Smith, scares you when your name is John Smith. The idea of potential employers Googling your name isn't a myth now — it's widely done all around the world and in all fields — and as someone who wants that job, you have to make sure that they don't confuse you for another person with the same name, or worse still, another person claiming to be you. Naymz is a new service that solves this hassle for you and does a pretty good job of doing so.
The Naymz concept is pretty simple to follow. When someone does a Google search for you, the first thing they find is your Naymz profile page (this slightly depends on your account plan — more on this below). They click through it, and up comes a profile that you made at Naymz. In return they're seeing what you want them to see and since Naymz is a service especially made for this (as opposed to, say, your MySpace or Amazon profile) you have a lot of control and it's great for a centralized page that those looking for you find resourceful.
Their business model is also simple and one that in my opinion has great potential — it will work. You can either choose to go with a 'Basic – Free' account or a 'Premium' account for around $5 a month or $50 an year. With the basic account, you get of course a basic profile, but one filled with sponsored ads and also you have no guarantee that your listing will appear within the search engines — it sort of has to find its own way around it. On the other hand, for the $50 your potential-employers will see no ads and you'll be guaranteed with the title and description of your choice that your Naymz profile will be listed within the first page of the search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) — I don't know how they do this, but it seems to work.
I recently tried out ClaimID, a service that does exactly the same thing — almost to the word. There are a few reasons I like Naymz better than ClaimID. First and formost, Naymz promises to give you control over something ClaimID can only hope for (like the Basic Plan in Naymz) which is the listing in search engines if you want it. You have to open your wallet for this, of course, but it's a positive sign that with Naymz, such an option is available if you want it. I'm not sure how they do it, but it's excellent that they do. Secondly, in my experience with using both the services, I found Naymz much easier to follow and a bit more feature-specific when creating a profile, by that I mean the things I really wanted them to be able to do were done so rightly. The profiles are also displayed better and suit human-reading habits.
I think this identity space has much to grow, and to certainly attract a larger crowd (which I'm sure they will through time), but for a first step it's a quite major one, and there's no arguing that Naymz might be a large contender if they do things rightly — as they have done so far — now and in the future.
