Read the press release here and see what others are saying about the news.

There are 96 industry categories and each site goes head-to-head with other sites from all over the world in their categories. WebAward judges represent various relevant disciplines and are distinguished experts in their fields. Judges include members of the media, advertising executives, top web site designers, content providers, and webmasters.

While site design is driven by market needs, it is the PeoplePond development team that sweats bullets, endures sleepless nights and wrangles with unforgiving code, vendors, hardware and marketing idiocy to ultimately persevere and deliver the award-winning user experience.

So Al, Barry, Nate and Poem, this one‘s for you. Well done!

You can now protect yourself from identity hijacking and provide your followers with the confidence that you are who you say you are. PeoplePond has introduced the first opportunity to verify your complete online identity. There have been other solutions offered up in the past but they’ve always been lacking the most crucial element, verification of you.

Just because there’s an online profile, social media account or blog and with a person’s name on it doesn’t mean that’s really the person in control of the account. For people looking for advice online or employers and trade partners looking to learn more about a potential employee or vendor, not knowing exactly who is represented where has been a serious concern.

The new PeoplePond service enables you to prove who you are and then display confirmation of your personal identity verification right on your PeoplePond profile alongside your online identity (the places online where you publish).

You can refer your followers to your PeoplePond profile for proof of your identity. As part of this identity verification service, you can also authenticate ownership over the online locations where you publish (social media sites, blogs, social networking sites, etc.).

Stay tuned for more announcements about additional tools, plugins and widgets for promoting your verified identity in the near future.

The ability to assert ownership over social media accounts and other sites has been recently launched on PeoplePond. And now that reach extends to blog sites. Making use of OpenID and OAuth support in the major blogging platforms, PeoplePond enables users to authenticate their ownership of their online content at these sites. Once a blog has been verified, followers will not have to worry about the authenticity of what they are reading.

There’s more coming so stay tuned. In the mean time, you can read more about this in the press release.

As noted in an earlier post, PeoplePond is enabling you to not only prove to your followers that you have proven your personal identity but also you have proven ownership of the accounts listed in the online identity section of your profile. Introduce OpenID into this equation and suddenly there are hundreds (if not thousands?) of services for which you can quickly prove ownership of to your followers.

More details are in the press release.

This is all about trust. Projecting your personal brand and entire online identity from a trusted platform that eliminates any concerns about identity spoofing will give you an added advantage with your followers.

So for those of you keeping count, a PeoplePond profile provides:

• Increased exposure for your entire online identity using a fundemental search engine optimization strategy.
• Advanced personal identity verification (you are who you say you are)
• Far-reaching online identity verification (proving ownership of online assets)
• A trusted platform from which to project your personal brand. 

And there’s more coming.

It’s so easy for someone to put up accounts on social media sites, free blog publishing platforms, etc. and pretend to be you. If you have a personal brand that you’ve invested years to develop, such behavior should scare the living !@#$ out of you. It doesn’t take much to destroy even the strongest personal brand when followers don’t have an authenticated center point that is independently verifiable.

Now you can create that trusted center point to provide your followers with your PeoplePond profile. Our users who subscribe to PeoplePond’s Identity Verification Package will discover two very exciting features are now available:

1. Personal Identity Verification
While there are many services that will enable you to verify that you own a specific account in an online service, they fall short of identifying you. It doesn’t do me, your follower, any good to see that “you” own an account at a social media site when I’m not sure “you” is really you. You can now provide that assurance to your followers with PeoplePonds Indentity Verification service. Utilizing an independent third-party to perform an instant background search we are able to provide you a very detailed multiple choice list of questions to answer. You’ll see when you take this test that it can be hard for you to answer these questions about you, so you can imagine how impossible it would be for someone to try to get through it if they’re not you.

Once you’ve successfully proven your identity, the badge on your PeoplePond profile will reflect that. We’ll soon enable you to place this badge on your blog or other locations to provide the confidence your followers need wherever they find you.

2. Online Service Authentication
Now that you have proven your personal identity, there is real value in claiming ownership over your online identity. We begun enabling you to claim your accounts and demonstrate that on your PeoplePond profile. We’re just getting started but here are some services you can now verify your identity on:

• AIM/AOL
• Brightkite
• Cliqset
• Facebook
• Flickr
• FriendFeed
• Get Satisfaction
• MySpace
• Picasa
• TripIt
• TwitPic
• Twitter
• YouTube 

The process is simple. Log into your PeoplePond profile and click the “Verify Services” button. Then click the button for the service you want to verify your account with and confirm to that service that you want to provide PeoplePond access to confirm your account. And if you haven’t already added the service to your profile, it will be done automatically for you.

We will be adding more and more services to this list very soon and ultimately you will be able to authenticate your identity for just about every place your online identity extends to.

This is all very exciting for us to provide to you. PeoplePond is the only service I’ve seen that combines these two verification services into a single platform, all while increasing the visibility and exposure for your brand in the most positive light.

Upgrade your profile with the Identity Verification Service today. You’ll also discover that you’ll get the all the benefits of the PeoplePond SEO package included as well. That’s a lot for less than $10 a month.

Read more about these new features of PeoplePond in the press release. 

PeoplePond

The best use of CompanyPond is to leverage the many PeoplePond profiles of the company’s staff, board members and evangelists. From the press release announcing the launch:

“The incredible SEO benefit of leveraging CompanyPond with PeoplePond to make use of the brand advocates found in employees, partners, stakeholders and evangelists is undeniable,” said David McInnis, the innovative mind who conceptualized both PeoplePond and CompanyPond.

Read the full press release here.

PeoplePond and WeaveMet have been approved to display the TRUSTe Privacy Seal of Approval.

“We are honored to join TRUSTe in advancing responsible information practices online,” said Theron McCollough, president of PeoplePond LLC. “TRUSTe certification serves as a benchmark in our ongoing commitment to safeguard consumer privacy and security which is especially important as we roll out our innovative verified online identity service.”

You will now see the TRUSTe Seal displayed on the PeoplePond and WeaveMet sites.

More information can be found in the press release.

Facebook users will be happy to see that they no longer need to remember their PeoplePond credentials to log into PeoplePond. To take advantage of this new feature you need only to click the Facebook Connect button in the login screen, provide your Facebook credentials, give an okey-dokey to Facebook and PeoplePond that you’re okay with them talking to each other and you’re set. You can even bypass the login process at PeoplePond if you’re already logged into Facebook.

As an added bonus, your Facebook profile Web address will automatically be added (if it’s not already there) to your Online Identity list for you.

You can read more in the press release.