We’ve relaunched! Question is, besides the new look, what has changed on basno.com?
- Expanded badge creation and distribution capabilities
We are really excited about equipping users with all of the tools they need to make, own, distribute and display digital objects. Digital badges, stickers, pins and other goods are redefining the way people tell their stories online.
Ultimately, the core tenets of almost any item we like to collect — everything from a diploma, certificate or medal to a t-shirt, jersey or hat — are fairly simple and boil down to two main things: (i) who distributed it and (ii) what are its release properties (i.e. was it distributed exclusively to a select group of people, or can anyone own it? if anyone can own it, is its supply limited? is there a cost to acquiring it?).
Think about it: diploma? distributed by your university exclusively to your graduating class; football jersey? licensed by a league or team and available to anyone willing to pay the price while supplies last; student organization t-shirt? created and handed out by a student exclusively to fellow members of the organization.
We believe that by allowing individuals and institutions to come together, create badges and other goods and then control their creations’ release properties (and that last part is the differentiater), the physical objects that we have long cherished will take new, and in fact enhanced, life online. They will appear in people’s News Feeds and Timelines, on people’s Profile pictures and embedded on their personal blogs or company websites. They will begin to fill a new shelf space, one that captures the essence of how collections have been formed and refined offline but that also unlocks everything the web does best: ease of access and display, communities both open and closed, discounts, commerce and more.
To-date, only Verified Issuers have had the ability to create and distribute badges on Basno. Now anyone can create something. Initially, “something” is a sticker, but going forward something may be other types of social merchandise (pins, buttons, patches and more) and will ultimately take many different forms. Authentic badges will always be identifiable by their silver frames as invitation-only goods created and distributed only by Verified Issuers. This has been the core product of our platform to-date and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. We believe goods distributed by high quality brands exclusively to recipients who have achieved a meaningful threshold (whether through a commitment of skill, energy, time or other resources) are best suited for the profile-focused social web and, in both digital and physical forms, hold huge sentimental value for their owners. - Publishing badges to your profile picture
Crucial to the essence of any object is its permanence. When you stick your medal up on your shelf, you only have to do it once. You don’t have to remind friends and contacts of it every time they enter your room or office. They can see it and understand it without your prompting. If they choose to engage with you about it, they can, or they can internalize its meaning without saying a word. That’s in large part the power of an object, and that’s the effect we’re focused on providing with the digital goods offered on BASNO. Inasmuch, we’re excited to offer users access to a new “shelf space” (if you will) through our “Publish to Profile Picture” interface. To complement the Vault every user has on basno.com, we hope that users will begin to integrate their most cherished badges into their various profile pictures. We hope badges will bring new meaning and purpose to what has become one of the most static aspects of social networking and empower users everywhere to express themselves through the objects they own.
Our Publish to Profile Picture interface is very easy to use. By dragging select badges into place at the bottom of a profile picture and publishing the picture for use on Facebook (Twitter and LinkedIn coming soon!), users can quickly place two of their badges in the most prominent place on their profiles. - Accelerated issuer verification and onboarding
It’s hard to offer authentic goods without verified issuers! Impossible, in fact. So we’ve spent a lot of time refining the process of verifying issuers. Specifically, we’ve centered our new verification process on one main observation: namely that brands and organizations can have a presence on Twitter independent of any underlying administrator account. Therefore, as institutions put BASNO to work (primarily to issue badge but also to own them), we expect most of them will access the platform using their Twitter credentials. By submitting the “Get Verified” form, potential issuers can initiate a very basic review of their Twitter tag and Company Website, where our primary objective is to confirm that hosted on the Company Website is a link to the specified Twitter tag.
Upon confirmation of those details and basic subjective review, Basno places the submitted Twitter tag on its Verified Issuer list, such that upon signing in with Twitter on the Basno sign in page the user is recognized as having been Verified. Users already verified by Twitter are automatically recognized as Verified Issuers. The Basno Verification Service team then also monitors issuance behaviors and confirms other details in order to give finalized Verification status. - Improved badge customization, tracking and measurement for Verified Issuers
Some of the best parts of badge issuance are the goodwill it creates with badge owners and the way it empowers those owners to become ambassadors for a given brand, cause or initiative across the social web. In this regard, badges serve a dual value proposition: (i) enabling owners to differentiate themselves in an unobtrusive manner, while (ii) helping issuers popularize important and value-creating behaviors and commitments. In all cases, the ability of an issuer to fully customize a badge experience — to make its voice and branding consistent throughout the experience — helps make both (i) and (ii) possible. It underscores the fact that a badge is indeed a credible distribution from a Verified Issuer. It also helps make specific calls-to-action directed at those exposed to a badge more meaningful.
Indeed, issuer customizations and personalizations across the entire life-cycle of a badge serve to enhance that badge’s power as a tool for engagement and promotion. A well-drafted invitation (sent in a timely manner) increases the likelihood that a potential badge owner will elect to accept the invitation and claim ownership of their badge. A well-conceived badge design, name and description will make users more eager to share their badge on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Targeting the right community with a badge (its messaging and design, included) makes it more likely that badge owners will choose to participate in a badge owner dialogue. Impactful copy in a Facebook message and a compelling, challenging and intriguing call-to-action at its end maximizes the chance that a user exposed to the badge will elect to take action in response.
So we have enhanced the tools made available to Verified Issuers for customizing every aspect of a badge: the design, name, description and classification; the invitation email; the message that a user shares when posting a badge to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn; and, finally, the calls-to-action attached to that Facebook message. As importantly, however, we’ve improved the collection and presentation of stats about badges to make sure that Verified Issuers can fully understand and contextualize the impact and efficacy of their various badge campaigns.
