monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
openid might be useful?
i decided not to attend the portland lunch 2.0 today thinking i have too much to do before this weekend. the lunch was concerning openID which i’ve been somewhat skeptical about. but ironically i had my first really positive experience of openID today.
i posted a comment in a blogger.com blog, but instead of using my blogger account to prove i was not spamming i could chose my livejournal account instead. i tried that out of curiosity, and validated the comment using to account from the other web site — and the experience was simple, fluid, and successful.
part of my skepticism of openID has i think been uninformed but from thoughts like:
- a sense that adoption would be poor, and without wide adoption it’s not compelling
- that it requires customers have a more complex mental model for identity, and identity is already somewhat abstract for people (with usernames and passwords) and unlike the real world
- when an abstract system requires education to use effectively, it is bound to fail unless there is a really compelling motivation to endure the education
the devil is in the details perhaps, or a good implementation. my playing with openID previously had felt awkward. today’s experience solved a real problem and was so fluid i barely noticed i was going to a different site to connect my identities. that aspect of “barely noticing” is really a good sign i think. if it’s mundane, then my concerns above are exaggerated. it didn’t feel like i needed to understand the more complex mental model, especially if i stay signed into the related sites and authorization is just a button push. if only one of my staple sites implements the standard, then i can continuously use that one as my core identity and sign-in credential. and in a task based situation like that, i didn’t need any education for what openID was, I could just discover how to use it successfully while completing the task and receive positive feedback.
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28. May 2008 at 3:05 pm :
daydreaming for a moment, my core identity is for me an email account. that’s also often the identity that i use for a sign-in credential even. if my email providers supported openID then I could just use one identity and password - the email account - and then use that as my credential everywhere.
29. May 2008 at 9:43 pm :
Fully agree that “barely noticing” (or better yet not noticing at all) should be the true goal.
And the email address thing? That’s come up as well. Some folks are definitely going down that path.
The downside with email being that your OpenID is tied to an actual “thing,” which can compromise your security.
Long story short, it’s still very very early in the world of OpenID, and it’s great to hear these thoughts on the topic.