Will OpenID Really Deliver?

Hi, Heather! I believe that nearly any technology that improves ease-of-use will succeed simply because time is precious. Just as social networks, I believe, will eventually pull from one common database of profile data, so too will many sites pull login data in a similar way. As people start to feel profile and password maintenance exhaustion, those sites that enable tools that improve simplicity will attract users, and those that require extra work will see declines. It's just human nature to not want to have to do things over and over again. :)

Eric Weaver
http://www.branddialogue.com

Google's Draft Blogger is now offering a form of OpenID on their bloggers comments.

http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-feature-openid-commenting.html

OpenID solves a big problem. Some of the recommendations in Marshall's article will help to make it easier for sure, and that it definitely needed. What is going to kick it over the top though will be to get some big player like Facebook or Google to start accepting OpenIDs.

I don't think the problem with adoption is so much a technical difficulty issue as it is obscurity. It's going to happen sooner rather than later.

Heather-- thanks for the tip. Looks promising, I know that the identity management folks have been trying to push this a while.

This might interest you, it's at Yale this Saturday, OpenID may be discussed. Symposium on Reputation Economies in Cyberspace

Heather, great thoughts and I also agree with Marshall that there are still things we all need to do as a community to further grow OpenID adoption. I'm starting to see some very interesting things from an OpenID usability perspective which hopefully should become public sooner rather than later.

What I'm really interested in is how OpenID provides a foundation for data portability (e.g. http://dataportability.org/) as well as decentralized social networks like I talked about at Web 2.0 Expo Berlin (http://www.slideshare.net/daveman692/web-20-expo-berlin-open-platforms-and-the-social-graph/).

I do think OpenID will deliver, because a) it's sorely needed, and b) it's simple and effective enough to get adopted.

On a), the explosion of activity in the Social Web has made the problem of managing "who am i" and "who do i know" relevant to a massive, mass consumer user base. Especially when you want to have a relationship with someone across multiple sites, you need to know that you're dealing with the same person in both places. OpenID lets people prove they own a URL, so you can come to a new site and establish who you are on an old site, which means so you can re-use your existing relationships. This is also what allows you to build up a positive reputation over time.

On b), I think OpenID passes the "smell test" for being small and simple and clear and doing one thing very well. Compared to previous attempts at making identity standards, OpenID is very concise, already has good library support in many languages, and is stewarded by a very pragmatic community.

Certainly from my perspective at Plaxo, where our business is focused on helping people stay connected to the people they know across multiple tools and services, we think OpenID is a key part of the overall solution, and we feel comfortable and confident betting on its continued adoption.

I also do think OpenId will deliver the best solution, and i think the recent adoption of the platform on Blogger´s comments.

The next good step would be a major mass player, such as Google or Yahoo to provide interoperability to their accounts and OpenID (it means, evey google or Yahoo Account will be also an OpenID account).

Silvio