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OpenID: What will it take to make it mainstream?Tuesday, May 6. 2008 I've been thinking about issues around user profile, data accessibility (because who wants to "port"), and universal login thelast couple of days as I prepare for a panel discussion about reputation at next week's Community 2.0 conference.Specifically, I wanted to check in on the state of OpenID support around the social web. It seems there are glimmers of hope out there. Large companies like Yahoo and Microsoft have announced plans to support OpenID in various ways. That's part of the problem: lot's of talk, not much action. From the TechCrunch artcile "Kevin Rose at FOWA: DIGG Adopts OpenID"
That was FOWA 2007... as in February of 2007 (over 18 months ago). Unfortunately, it seems like OpenID gets more lip service than it does development resources for most sites. AOL received kudos for their OpenID implementation, yet you still can't login in to AOL using an OpenID created by a "3rd Party" (read: not AOL.) From AOL's login help file. Can I log in to all AOL sites using my OpenID account? Isn't one of the key tenats of OpenID not to have a central authority managing IDs, so, more often than not you will be dealing with "3rd party generated IDs". I don't claim to be an identity or data portability expert, but it seems there is work to be done both on the advocacy & user education side of OpenID, as well as on the implementation side. On the positive side, there are several sites that fully support OpenID, and they can be found here: https://www.myopenid.com/directory Trackbacks
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At present there are nearly 14,000 OpenID enabled websites (http://janrain.com/blog/2008/05/). Most are user generated content sites - wikis, blogs, discussion groups, social networks, etc. Further, there are nearly 400 million OpenID enabled users, although many of these are not active or may not even know that they have an OpenID since they were passively provisioned by providers such as AOL and Yahoo.
We are starting to see OpenID expand into additional mainstream applications such as media (CNN Political Market), group productivity applications (37 Signals), and business networking (Plaxo). What is required for the acceleration of OpenID adoption is easier deployment models for website operators and more intuitive end user tools. One example of this is a recently released OpenID login widget, ID Selector (wwww.idselector.com). The OpenID Foundation and the companies supporting OpenID (Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Google, IBM, BBC, Verisign, JanRain, France Telecom, etc.) also continue to promote adoption of OpenID while enhancing the associated products and services. As the dialog continues, we'll learn more about when and where OpenID-based solutions can address market needs.
Brian - thanks much for the thoughtful and informative reply. idselector is very cool.
Funny you mention 37Signals. I was using two of their services (Highrise and Basecamp) and tried to switch to login by OpenID. I set up an OpenID on my Flickr account (Via Yahoo!), but alas - Basecamp wouldn't acknowledge it. This is how I came to be aware of different generations in OpenID - 37Signals service rep said something about BC not supporting OpenID 2.0, whatever that is.
Talk about OpenID implementation.
Nice post Bill. Chris Messina generated a good list of sites (http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2008/02/15/an-update-to-my-my-openid-shitlist-hitlist-and-wishlist) that have promised OpenID support and have not delivered, ones who have delivered and ones who should.
I think it will come down to users demanding OpenID in order to force the hand of all the sites that are currently content to sit on the fence. There are lots of cool new technologies out there like DiSo that will make it harder and harder to merely play lip service to being open.
I've had several failures using my TypePad-generated OpenID to log into other OpenID sites. We need to solve problems like these first.
It's more of a slow creep than a flurry, but OpenID is getting out there. I use mine where I can (currently, only a few places, the most prominent being 37signals, where it's especially helpful for tying multiple accounts together).
We can also help further along adoption by supporting OpenID logins with our own sites. After reading your post, I looked into options for my own wordpress blog, and there are already several plugins available allowing readers to manage accounts and comment using their OpenID. I'm gonna try implementing something this week. The support is out there for other blogging tools and services as well. |
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