[OpenID] "declining OpenID usage"
David Recordon
david at sixapart.com
Tue Apr 7 20:57:50 UTC 2009
I'd love to see the front-end aspects of RPX offered as an Open Source
JavaScript library; there have been a few starts but never anything
fully complete. I think these days a good OpenID UI is considered to
look much like RPX with one-click buttons to sign in using Google,
MySpace and Yahoo! and then an OpenID button which provides the text
field for people who have their own custom OpenIDs.
--David
On Apr 7, 2009, at 1:50 PM, Tony Stubblebine wrote:
> What's actually simpler? Switching to one of these services, which
> seems to require some architecture changes, or mimicking the clickpass
> UI which is to ask for user name on some of these services and then
> construct the appropriate openid. I like the second approach for a
> quick turnaround since I know which parts of the system it touches.
>
> --tony
>
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 1:29 PM, David Recordon <david at sixapart.com>
> wrote:
>> Also on this note, as I said in a comment on your blog
>> (http://blog.crowdvine.com/2009/04/02/declining-openid-usage/#comment-736
>> ) Tony,
>> I think that you're in a great place to get some actual data about
>> how the
>> user experience effects usages of OpenID on your conference networks.
>> Something as simple as trying out RPX on one of your next
>> conference sites
>> and seeing if by using more recognizable brands and buttons to
>> start sign in
>> versus a box to enter a URL make a noticeable difference. I would
>> be happy
>> to help make this happen.
>> --David
>> On Apr 5, 2009, at 12:51 PM, Chris Messina wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Tony Stubblebine
>> <tony at crowdvine.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Chris, thanks for CC'ing me on this.
>>
>> And thanks for following up!
>>
>>>
>>> 1. We're completely bought in to the idea of the open stack. In a
>>> lot
>>> of ways, CrowdVine is an anti-eyeballs business. We're judged on the
>>> number and strength of the connections we make for conference
>>> attendees. The open stack reduces barriers to making those
>>> connections.
>>
>> Good to hear! Would love to hear how we could help make the UX for
>> the Open
>> Stack work better for you!
>>
>>>
>>> 2. I was inspired to look at the numbers after seeing Eric Reis talk
>>> at Web2. He's pushing measurement so that you can have a
>>> conversation
>>> that's based on data rather than opinions. A lot of people have told
>>> me that our numbers are low because of our UI. That's an opinion.
>>> It's
>>> easy to find supporting arguments for that opinion, but it should be
>>> just as easy to prove the opinion with some numbers.
>>
>> I generally support this (speaking from real world numbers rather
>> than just
>> perceptions).
>> I think that we lack a lot of core metrics in the OpenID community
>> and so
>> our conversations fishtail all over the place without being
>> anchored to a
>> clear, distortion-free view of the world.
>> While we know we're still early stage getting this technology off the
>> ground, there are enough implementations that COULD be sources of
>> data that
>> it's a tragedy that we haven't organized ourselves around making this
>> potential resource available for inspection.
>>
>>>
>>> 3. Nobody has shared a single bit of data with me, which makes it
>>> seem
>>> that nobody knows what they're talking about. If you're not
>>> measuring
>>> how are you going to know when you hit on a better design? Are there
>>> any OpenID consumers on this list? What is your adoption rate? Have
>>> any of your design changes made any bit of difference? If I switch
>>> to
>>> a better design am I going to move from 1.5% adoption to 1.75% or
>>> am I
>>> going to move to 10%?
>>
>> Janrain is one of the few services that has published numbers from
>> their
>> work with various OpenID relying parties:
>> http://blog.janrain.com/2009/01/openid-case-study-afi-begin.html
>> http://blog.janrain.com/2009/01/why-websites-should-accept-multiple.html
>>
>> I wish more companies, including the one that I work for part-time,
>> provided
>> more of this kind of information.
>>
>>> 4. A lot of people have reacted to our numbers being low, but very
>>> few
>>> people have reacted to our numbers going down. We get to take
>>> regular
>>> snapshots of nearly identical communities and we've mostly seen a
>>> decline in usage. For example, we had two large conferences that
>>> were
>>> a year apart in the same city. The first year adoption was 8% and
>>> the
>>> second year adoption was 3%.
>>
>> I can't explain why your numbers are going down — but it would be
>> interesting if we were able to do a study or survey to find out why —
>> especially from folks who used OpenID in the past but didn't use it
>> again.
>> I could imagine that audiences are becoming more mainstream and are
>> thus
>> overall less familiar with OpenID, but that's just guessing. It
>> could also
>> be that the value for using OpenID wasn't obvious, but that's a
>> separate
>> issue that needs to be addressed.
>> It is worth pointing to some of Janrain's case studies (again,
>> lacking other
>> corroborating resources) that suggest that OpenID has in fact
>> increased user
>> signups:
>> http://www.janrain.com/openid/casestudies
>> Examples: "Mixx observes a ten-fold increase in registrations via
>> OpenID",
>> "PropertyMaps sees registrations increase by 200% after deploying
>> OpenID and
>> today 25% of registrations occur via OpenID", "37 signals now has
>> 15% of
>> it's users logging in with OpenID".
>> It's also worth pointing out what's required and what's not; today,
>> most
>> sites require email addresses, so that's what gravitated towards,
>> since it's
>> the familiar. If you required OpenID, you'd obviously see a
>> different story,
>> but you may also setup an impenetrable barrier for some.
>> Now that you've run the numbers, I'm curious to see if you'd be
>> willing to
>> work with us to do measurements over time, using a variety of
>> OpenID-driven
>> interfaces, from RPX to VidoopConnect to other approaches, like the
>> developing pop-up approach? As you said, you're curious as to why
>> the number
>> went down; well, what if we took steps to see if we could bring those
>> numbers back up by tweaking the interface or discoverability of
>> OpenID?
>> Chris
>>
>>>
>>> --tony
>>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 10:13 AM, Chris Messina <chris.messina at gmail.com
>>> >
>>> wrote:
>>>> 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 at 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
>>>> This email is: [ ] bloggable [X] ask first [ ] private
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> CEO, CrowdVine
>>> 707.953.3868
>>> www.crowdvine.com
>>> blog.crowdvine.com
>>> www.twitter.com/tonystubblebine
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Chris Messina
>> Citizen-Participant &
>> Open Web Advocate
>>
>> factoryjoe.com // diso-project.org // vidoop.com
>> This email is: [ ] bloggable [X] ask first [ ] private
>> _______________________________________________
>> general mailing list
>> general at openid.net
>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> CEO, CrowdVine
> 707.953.3868
> www.crowdvine.com
> blog.crowdvine.com
> www.twitter.com/tonystubblebine
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