[OpenID] OpenID Uri versus Email addresses

[Scott Kveton]

> I assume you usually present to middle-aged business people, like most of us
> do. Do you think this would also be true for teenagers whose on-line life is
> MySpace?
>
> I postulate -- although I have no data to back it up -- that in that
> demographic, everybody knows what their MySpace page is (i.e. a URL) and
> they consider e-mail to be something for quaint old farts only (like
> middle-aged business people) and irrelevant to them.

I would postulate that the MySpace example is an exception, not the
rule.  Also, MySpace users also use emails quite a bit in the site as
well (for example, to sign-in).  Facebook is also email based.

Having seen the summary of a recent usability study around SSO
(unfortunately, the company can't yet make the study public) when
asked to sign in on a page, users immediately enter their email
address *and* password.  That's scary to me and really highlights both
the usability problems we're seeing as well as the security dilemmas
it creates.

I don't think there is a silver bullet here.  We can head in that
direction but in the mean time, I think we're going to need a bunch of
different ways of doing the same thing that solve these problems.

- Scott

> This is an important discussion, but let's make sure that we don't make
> generalizations that might not be true.
>
> If anybody actually had some hard data, that'd be great, otherwise we are
> arguing everybody's guesses and are none the wiser.
>
>
>
>
>
> Johannes Ernst
> NetMesh Inc.
>
>
>
>
>  http://netmesh.info/jernst
>
>
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