[OpenID] Thinking About OpenID.com

[Andy Powell]

The openid.com domain is an annoyance but not critical IMHO.  The
content at openid.net is ok IMHO.

>From my perspective there are three barriers to adoption right now:

1) ordinary people just don't get the idea that their online identity
(their username) should be represented as a URL

2) ordinary people find the user experience of OpenID tends to be too
clunky at the moment ("I want to log into X but I'm being asked to give
my credentials to Y" kind of issue)

3) some techies (i.e. non-ordinary people :-) ) have perceived security
issues (particularly around phishing) leading to insufficient trust in
OpenID as an identity infrastructure

Note that by "from my perspective" I mean "this is what I'm sensing from
the community I deal with (UK education)".  I have no hard evidence to
back these statements up unfortunately.

There is a fourth barrier as well:

4) not enough major RPs

which is probably the most significant, but that kinda falls out of the
other three I suspect?

Andy
--
Head of Development, Eduserv Foundation
http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/
http://efoundations.typepad.com/
andy.powell at eduserv.org.uk
+44 (0)1225 474319 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: general-bounces at openid.net 
> [mailto:general-bounces at openid.net] On Behalf Of David Recordon
> Sent: 19 March 2008 00:32
> To: openid-general List
> Subject: [OpenID] Thinking About OpenID.com
> 
> Earlier today I came across a blog post 
> (http://www.jason-preston.com/index.php/2008/03/18/why-openid-
> will-never-work/
> ) talking about some of the adoption hurdles around OpenID 
> for normal people.  The largest concern still seems to come 
> from how OpenID.net presents (or doesn't) itself in terms of 
> being dead simple to actually get an OpenID.  While I don't 
> agree with every point that Jason makes, I certainly 
> understand what he is saying especially with how he ended his 
> response to my comment:
> 
>  > I think it's just that the concept of OpenID is supposed 
> to be "braindead simple login for disparate web services,"
>  > and when you go to the page, what you see is "confusing 
> multiple login accounts, none of which you can do  > anything 
> with from this page."
> 
> Thus the thought in my head is one that has come up in the 
> past, though never anything we've done something about.  What 
> if we actually purchase OpenID.com (like Jason suggested) and 
> use it to be a dead- simple normal person destination site?  
> OpenID.net can remain more targeted for developers and we can 
> stop fighting the battle of trying to make one site useful 
> for everyone.
> 
> Does this make sense to others?  Would people see this as a 
> useful way to spend OpenID Foundation resources?
> 
> Thanks,
> --David
> 
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