[OpenID] "declining OpenID usage"

[Chris Messina]

It's a little like Wetpaint removing support for OpenID from their site,
when the UI looked like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/2478951850/

...and was NEVER able to resolve my perfectly valid and otherwise usable
OpenID URL.

That said, I think that adoption of OpenID largely comes down to making a
better user experience and improve how we communicate the value of using
OpenID.

While you make a valid point Johannes, I think that we've largely failed so
far to provide a proper prescription for how to EFFECTIVELY implement
OpenID. Even if you're compliant with the spec, as Crowdvine is, their
implementation leaves much to be desired — the fault of which is not
entirely theirs.

Fortunately, we've recently approved the User Interface WG, the first of its
kind for OpenID, and from this group, we should get a spec that helps
implementors get more out of supporting the protocol.

That said, OpenID doesn't sell itself, and every site that supports OpenID
today — for better or worse — is a sales opportunity that we should be
capitalizing on to tell the story of OpenID.

I have some ideas for how to address this but rather than be reactionary in
this particular case, I think that we should look at the data that Tony has
presented, consider it, think about what percentage of OpenID usage would be
a good target and then find other sources of data that either corroborate or
dispute his numbers. We unfortunately have been unsuccessful at getting data
from the larger OPs (I'm looking squarely at Yahoo, Google, and AOL) on
OpenID adoption or usage; on the flipside, Facebook has a great story for
adoption of its Connect product with data to boot so we're currently at a
data disadvantage to contrast Tony's findings with those from the wider
community.

Chris

On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 12:56 AM, Johannes Ernst <jernst+openid.net@
netmesh.us> wrote:

> See http://blog.crowdvine.com/2009/04/02/declining-openid-usage/
> I would like to propose a concerted effort to
> 1. identify negative OpenID experiences by existing adopters, like this one
> 2. "crowd source", to the OpenID community, the analysis why they may be
> seeing what they are seeing
> 3. engage with the site to improve their implementation.
>
> For example, when checking out their site, I noticed that the two forms for
> creating an account (username/pass vs. OpenID) look almost the same. See
> screenshots below. This does not communicate to the user at all that there
> is any advantage, on that site, to use OpenID. It can clearly be done much
> better, and most of us know how, but they apparently didn't... so negative
> experiences are published, and that can't be a good thing.
>
> I'm afraid that unless we combat these kinds of things heads-on, a body of
> "knowledge" will emerge that OpenID "isn't used".
>
> (It also may well be that the numbers are not good even for good
> implementations. In which case we might need to make substantial
> improvements to more than just our ability to teach sites how to implement
> OpenID well. It would be useful to try to solicit those numbers, too.)
>
> Anybody agree / disagree?
> *
> *
> *
> *
> **
> *
> *
>
>
> Johannes Ernst
> NetMesh Inc.
>
>   http://netmesh.info/jernst
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> general mailing list
> general at openid.net
> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
>
>


-- 
Chris Messina
Citizen-Participant &
 Open Web Advocate

factoryjoe.com // diso-project.org // vidoop.com
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