Econometa

PrefPass is now in private beta! It’s been an intense time getting everything ready to go, but it’s now out there (and in my sidebar).

In the requisite three words, what is PrefPass all about?

As I was talking about in the last post, the idea is to keep things simple and anonymous for users, while giving sites exactly what they need:

- A user identifier (unidirectional: unique to the site and user)
- User prefs for personalization: keywords, interests, etc.

So what’s the point? To reduce the number of registrations and passwords you have to keep track of. How many times have you followed a link to a news site, or tried to check out a cool new app, and decided to bail out when you were faced with yet another registration form? PrefPass replaces that form with one click.

For sites, letting people bypass registration means attracting more users, providing better personalization, and earning higher ad revenues. PrefPass is really lightweight, so there’s no server side integration and no security worries, just a simple javascript button you add to the site. For an example of some things you can do with PrefPass, check out the demo site we set up at YourSuperNews.com.

For blogs, PrefPass is so easy to use that you can essentially add instant personalization to your blog. Check out the widgets in my sidebar for an example (more coming soon). If your blog or app has ads, you can earn more from them by targeting them to user interests, as they are here at EconoMeta. Even if you don’t have any ads, PrefPass complements stats like hits and pageviews by showing you what your readers actually are interested in — an example of this is the Audience Cloud in the sidebar here.

The point is that pretty much any site can be made better by being customized to user interests. And the purpose of PrefPass is to make it as easy as possible for the site and user to form the relationship needed to do this.

We’re off and running, with a long list of cool stuff on the way. Give it a try, and let us know what you think!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 4th, 2006 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Identity, Personal data, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.