[OpenID] OpenID in India - What stops you from using OpenID?

[Jeetendra Mirchandani]

Dear OpenID Community,

I have been working with Snorri, Founder of OpenID EU Foundation to promote
OpenID in India. Haven't had much head way yet, but we are looking to
collect information on why do startups not want to support OpenID. Can you
help us reach all the guys by passing on the following post to them?
What stops you from using OpenID?

This is a question for all those website owners in India, who have been
around for a while, and those who have started new ventures recently. Let me
list down possible reasons I can think of, as if I were to own a website
targeted towards Indians

   1. Indian users dont know what OpenID is
   2. Your traffic is reluctant to use a URL as a username, they are just
   more comfortable with the old traditional way of having a user name and
   password
   3. You, the website owner, wants to build a user base. And users signing
   in via an OpenID aren't really users that you own (Or atleast thats what you
   think?)
   4. You don't trust that OpenID provider is secure enough. You are
   responsible for any user data, and don't want the third-party provider to be
   involved in how secure your user data is
   5. OpenID implementation is very complicated

I would somewhat agree to the first reason that all Indian users might not
know what OpenID is. But some would — and after all you still have the old
traditional registration form on your website for those users, right? I
would disagree with point 2, because users who are aware of what OpenID is,
of how much pain it saves you, wouldn't mind using it.

I would totally disagree with point 3, but that seems to be the most popular
reason in my discussions with various people. A new user signing in with his
or her OpenID is still a new user for you! And its even more simple for the
user, removing the yet-another-registration-form barrier. I would argue that
OpenID is actually a big positive when it comes to acquiring new users!

With the same argument, point 4 is also not totally valid! A user
understands who to trust, and build up that trust over time. With big
players like Yahoo providing OpenID <http://openid.yahoo.com/>, I think this
barrier is gone.

And if you say OpenID implementation is complicated, you need to look
around. The developers section on openid.net
<http://openid.net/developers/>could
be a good starting point.

Do you have more points explaining what will it take for you to implement
OpenID support for your users? Do you have any more pain points? Tell us!
Lets discuss and solve these barriers! I invite you all to send feedback,
either via comments on this blog
post<http://openid.in/2008/05/18/what-stops-your-from-using-openid/>,
or via email to jeetu [at] openid [dot] in
Read more at http://openid.in/2008/05/18/what-stops-you-from-using-openid/


-- 
Regards,
Jeetu
http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~jeetu
http://apps.facebook.com/myorkut/

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
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