[OpenID] Platform-ing the web with Federated hubs and syndicated apps

[S. Sriram]

Hi,

it seems to me that there could be a fairly easy way to
'Platform the web with Federated hubs and syndicated apps',
using Open-Id like principles. I'd appreciate any thoughts,
issues etc. on this.

Problem:
If a web-service with say 1m users wants to become an
app hub i.e. a platform ala facebook, how would they do
so without rewriting their whole app and how can apps
syndicate themselves to (hundreds) of such services without 
customizing their apps for each one.

Solution:
Hub drops-in a program called federator.cgi into its www tree
Hub gets an api_key/secret_key from spoke
Hub adds an applink to its web-page
 <a href=/federator.cgi?app=spoke>Go to spoke app</a>

Logged-in user at hub.com clicks on link

federator.cgi gets logged-in users user_id, looks up the api_key for spoke 
and calls spoke to get a session key for user_id
 spoke.com/syindicator.cgi/getsession?api_key=...&user_id=...

syndicator.cgi generates a session_key, stores it with user_id and
 returns the session_key

hub.com redirects user-agent to
 spoke.com/index?session_key=...

spoke.com retrieves user_id for given session_key and logs user
in as user_id and wraps its app with the appropriate hub.com skin.

User uses app as hub.com/user_id 

----

Spoke likely has hundreds of hubs that syndicate its app. So, if a
user were to land up at spoke.com how can they access their 
hub.com/user_id account 
- one could use an OpenId like dance without the server discovery bit

Merging id's: It is more than likely that a user will have multiple 
accounts at spoke.com, a mechanism to easily merge accounts could
to be provided at spoke.com

Thanks
S. Sriram
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