[OpenID] OpenId Chance

[Dave Kearns]

IMHO nothing would do more to kill OpenID or, at best, consign it to a
limited niche, than becoming the Plaxo of identity systems. I'll put my
identity data out where I intend it to go, thank you, not where someone with
whom I have a tenuous relationship (at best) decides to poke his/her nose.

-dave

> -----Original Message-----
> From: general-bounces at openid.net [mailto:general-bounces at openid.net]On
> Behalf Of Chris Messina
> Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 9:44 AM
> To: general at openid.net
> Subject: Re: [OpenID] OpenId Chance
>
>
> This is the general concept and thrust for marrying OpenID with
> microformats.
>
> I intend to write about this soon, but essentially the idea is to host
> an hcard on the end of your OpenID, and contained within that hcard
> would be your XFN relationships.
>
> Obviously if you have a blog at the end of your OpenID and use
> WordPress, you're well on your way to having a publicly-portable
> social network.
>
> There are two elements of this to consider, however:
>
> First, is that not everyone will appreciate having their details
> shared about them by others (see FOAF) on a public portal. This could
> be remedied by, at the least, concealing the XFN relationships behind
> OpenID authentication.
>
> Second, just as folks may not appreciate their contact information
> being shared on the open web for them, still others may not want to be
> added to Social Network X automatically. To some degree, Plaxo's
> Universal Address Book Widget (http://www.plaxo.com/api/widget) puts
> you, the inviter, in the position of responsibility for spamming your
> friends. The same should be true for importing and exporting social
> networks in two ways:
>
> 1. no one should be automatically added to a social network unless
> they requested it. Therefore, whenever contacts are imported into a
> system as a step in rebuilding or *subscribing* to one's social
> network, the next step will be to *invite* those contacts who are not
> already in the system to join.
> 2. Now, if certain contacts are discovered or cross-referenced in the
> system and are discovered to already exist, the network's internal
> messaging system may be used to invite those contacts to connect, or
> to be added to a non-reciprocal relationship (as in accelerating the
> discovery of the "Add as a friend" process).
>
> Now, what I think is actually most interesting about this proposal is
> that, should OpenID take off, the need to import/export your social
> network at each new site will actually diminish, not increase. For
> example, you don't download the Yellow Pages into every new cell phone
> you buy, do you? Instead, you have a simple addressing mechanism (aka
> the phone number) to connect with people. And, while you currently
> have to sync your address book with your phone to create a focused
> subset of the Yellow Pages, I imagine that true user-centric identity
> would make this syncing process somewhat obsolete for when you log in
> to a service and *share* your connections, aren't you then putting the
> onus on the service to maintain its awareness of who you're connected
> with? And, on top of that, all you need are URLs for people in order
> to contact them with the simple messaging exchange -- meaning that
> internal network messaging systems will become somewhat redundant.
>
> If, instead of going to Flickr, MySpace, Facebook and all the rest
> that have their own internal messaging systems, (like email used to
> be) and instead log directly into my iDP Inbox (which, acting as my
> agent, has collected all my messages) and am able to get all my
> messages in one place, I can then respond by sending messages to
> people's OpenIDs, instead of through those service's internal
> mechanisms.
>
> I would strongly recommend considering this proposal, which is based
> on and built with technology and standards that are available *today*
> (and in fact are already being deployed). And is also respectful of
> people's attention, and of their increasingly limited desire to join
> YASN.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Chris
>
>
> On 1/26/07, Roland Sassen (using mozilla) <sassen at thinsia.com> wrote:
> > As there seem to be many people on this list with real names,
> > the time has come to admit that hiding some basic information about your
> > person is not necessary.  This opens the possibility to openly store
> > this basic identity information
> > on your personal internet portal, or just web-site, which can be the
> > starting point of your
> > internet experience. Store your OpenId server here, your list of trusted
> > sites and persons,
> > your cross-site reputation, and more. This is a user-centric solution,
> > which is a more useful attribute than
> > "decentralized". As CardSpace uses the end-device as a repository, which
> > cannot be secured,
> > OpenId can make a difference here. I blogged about this OpenId Chance
> > here <http://www.thinsia.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry070118-135301>
> > Roland Sassen <http://www.heartbeat-id.com/15>
> >
> > THINSIA <http://www.thinsia.com>
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
> --
> Chris Messina
> Citizen Provocateur &
>   Open Source Ambassador-at-Large
> Work: http://citizenagency.com
> Blog: http://factoryjoe.com/blog
> Cell: 412 225-1051
> Skype: factoryjoe
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