OpenID\u00a0has become\u00a0a key part of the Identity Metasystem<\/strong><\/p>\n I think many of us involved with the OpenID community came to the same conclusions, but felt that if we kept trying to move adoption forward, we'd be able to figure out how to solve the problems.\u00a0 In the last year, OpenID has without doubt become the most widely\u00a0adopted system for\u00a0reusable internet\u00a0identity.\u00a0 Adoption by destination sites continues to grow dramatically: approximately 50,000 sites as of July 1, 2009.\u00a0 The big Internet properties like Google, Yahoo, AOL, MySpace, and Windows Live have become (or are becoming) OpenID Providers.\u00a0\u00a0 As a result, the vast majority of the online US population has an account that can be used to log in at the growing number of destination sites.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maybe even more important, some of these sites are of the kind that can quickly<\/em> change perception and behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most notable is Facebook, which took a huge step forward when it started accepting OpenIDs for login – blowing away the old saw that “no one wants to be a relying party”.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, the US Government has decided to adopt OpenID as one of the identity protocols for citizen interaction – again, as Relying Party, not Identity Provider.<\/p>\n Sea Change<\/strong><\/p>\n There is a sea-change here.\u00a0 I strongly believe the right thing to do is get\u00a0 behind OpenID as part of the Identity Metasystem, help promote adoption,\u00a0and work with the community to make it safer and easier to use.\u00a0 What is encouraging is that the community has repeatedly shown its\u00a0ability to evolve\u00a0as it deploys, and has been able to rapidly\u00a0extend the standard from the inside.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It\u00a0has now become widely recognized in the industry that active client software (also called an \u201cIdentity Selector\u201d) for OpenID could solve\u00a0most of its\u00a0problems, given some minor revisions or additions to the protocol.\u00a0 By remembering the identities you use, this kind of software can address two sets of issues:<\/p>\n New prototype at IIW<\/strong><\/p>\n Yesterday at the OpenID Summit hosted by Yahoo, Microsoft's Mike Jones and Ariel Gordon\u00a0 showed some of the work\u00a0their team has\u00a0been doing to help figure out how this kind of capability could work.\u00a0 What's cool is that\u00a0the\u00a0client they were showing is completely optional – without it, OpenID continues to work as it currently does.\u00a0 But with it, experience improves and the dangers are greatly reduced.\u00a0\u00a0I agree with them\u00a0that demand for a better and safer OpenID user experience will drive selector adoption, which will in turn enable scenarios at higher levels of assurance than are possible with OpenID today.<\/p>\n Ariel Gordon, the main UX designer, told me, “I see it as a starting point\u00a0for joint work with others in the community – definitely\u00a0not a finished solution or product.”<\/p>\n New OpenIDs can be added on the fly, by picking one from a list suggested by the site, or by typing the provider\u2019s URL.<\/p>\n Mike made a good point about what this means for people who use smaller OpenID providers:\u00a0 \u201cThe cool thing is that it remembers the OpenIDs you\u2019ve used and where you used them [\u2026] With\u00a0a web-based Nascar user interface, Arizona Sate University users will never get the same user experience that Google.com users get [\u2026]\u201d<\/p>\n Good Tweets<\/strong><\/p>\n Unfortunately I couldn't attend the meeting in person but remained wired to the tweets.\u00a0 Summit host Allen Tom from Yahoo said, “Showing already used OpeniIDs is a great protection against phishing: if a rogue RP tries to send the user to ‘fake yahoo.com’, a regular Yahoo user will click on his Yahoo button in the selector and won\u2019t even see the fake yahoo link.”<\/p>\n He added, “The prototype selector goes in the right direction by offering a better experience when present, while not preventing users to access their favorite sites from any computer.\u201d<\/p>\n Google's Eric Sachs saw value too. \u201c\u2026And a fake yahoo tile would say \u201cnever used here\u201d so that\u2019s even more information to help protect the user.\u201d<\/p>\n Bringing our perceptions together from different organizations with different missions and\u00a0 vantage points is what can make all of this succeed. The partnering is the key.<\/p>\n So one of the best things about the prototype, in my view,\u00a0is that it has already\u00a0demonstrated collaboration between a\u00a0whole set\u00a0of really experienced community members:<\/p>\n\n
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It is consistent with the Information Card metaphor:<\/p>\n\n
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