Naymz - Good Idea with a Laym Name

At the risk of insulting the founders - the name of this new take on social networking needs to be changed. Enough already with the misspelling thing. We got it. Move on.

Anyway, naymz.com is interesting, especially as an indication of how social networking apps are changing - here's an early assessment:

1) They have some good nuggets hidden under some hackneyed tricks. Good nuggets - manage your personal identity on line! Bad stuff like a Plaxo-style "invite your friends" (quick way to annoy your friends) and the opportunity to share your maiden name (great way to provide a key piece of info to data zombies).

2) A score (they call it a "RepScore") for your reputation and some identity verification services - a huge hole in social networking apps, especially for business, is a means of ensuring you are who you say you are, and that there is greater transparency to your reputation. So this is an important first step. But unfortunately, the rep is based on stuff similar to that of LinkedIn, like whether my profile is complete, and how many contacts I have. So it remains a score, not of reputation, but of my ability to do what naymz.com needs me to do to build out a comprehensive database.

3) Strategically, www.naymz.com has internalised that their competitive advantage won't come through a walled garden - so they work with LinkedIn and others. How well, I cannot say, but simply focusing on extending the value of current social networking apps by being a reputation and identity verification engine is an important step in the evolution.