[OpenID] Thinking About OpenID.com

[Brendon J. Wilson]

+1 Snorri's comment.

I've been looking at OpenID for a client, and as I survey the OpenID  
landscape it's become apparent very quickly that there's lots of  
identity providers, but not a lot of relying parties. Any of the big  
players seem to be staying out of that space, with the exception of  
the blog platforms and open source CMS systems. Examples: AOL - only  
Propeller seems to have OpenID as a login option. Yahoo! - haven't  
found an OpenID login yet. All of the focus right now seems to be on  
getting people to get an OpenID.

I think any discussion of how to evangelize OpenID to the general  
public also requires the foundation to clearly articulate the value of  
being a relying party, otherwise we risk stalled growth when users  
finally decide to get an OpenID, but have nowhere to use it. JanRain  
claims 8,000 relying parties, but I've seen little justification for  
that number; OpenIDDirectory.com lists about 530 or so OpenID-related  
sites, and 60 or so of them are identity providers. Demonstrating  
value to potential relaying parties also requires showing, in no  
uncertain terms, just how many people already use it.

I'd like to propose the following strawman benefits of being a relying  
party for the group to eviscerate (warning: businesspeak ahead):

1) Expedited customer acquisition: OpenID allows user to quickly and  
easily complete the account creation process by eliminating entry of  
commonly requested fields (email address, sex, birthdate), thus  
reducing the friction to adopt a new service.

2) Reduced user account management costs: The primary cost for most IT  
organizations is resetting forgotten authentication credentials. By  
reducing the number of credentials, a user is less likely to forget  
their credentials. By outsourcing the authentication process to a  
third-party, the relying party can avoid those costs entirely.

3) "Thought leadership": There is an inherent marketing value for an  
organization to associate itself activities that promote it as a  
thought leader. It provides an organization with the means to  
distinguish itself from its competitors. This is your chance to  
outpace your competitors.

4) Your competitors are already doing it: Whoops! So you missed out on  
number 4, so you have to do it, otherwise you're falling behind the  
times. Ketchup!

5) Simplified user experience: Logical follow on from 1 & 2. However,  
it's at the end of the list because that's not the business priority.  
The business priority is the benefit that results from a simplified  
user experience, not the simplified user experience itself.

Thoughts?

Brendon
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Brendon J. Wilson
www.brendonwilson.com