Windows of Opportunity · 24 March, 08:20 AM
Jason Kolb had a piece on large sites provididing OpenID support for their users. Jason draws a distinction between providing an OpenID, as AOL has done, and accepting OpenID as an identity:
The problem is that these companies are only acting as ID providers, they are not enabling users from other systems to log in using THEIR ID’s (to us geeks that means they’re not acting as relying partys, only as issuers). They’re trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Personally, as a small developer, I think this is a wonderful situation:
- It gives small develpoment shops a way to easily tie into large bases of users.
- It smooths a barrier to entry: every time you force a user to sign up for something, you’re creating an obstacle to people using your site.
- It smooths one of the barriers to acquisition. Consider what Yahoo! had to go through with the Flickr, Oddpost, or del.icio.us users into the Yahoo! userbase. Oddpost was clearly a large effort; Flickr somewhat less so, though there was some angst over the forced cutover, del.icio.us doesn’t seem to have much integration with Yahoo! at all. These days, if you build a site as an OpenID relying party, then you automatically have an integration point with OpenID issuers.
— Gordon Weakliem
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