[OpenID] FreeYourID shutting down

[Nash, Andrew]

How on earth do we come to believe that concepts like "paying for an
identity" even have any meaning in the large scale consumer space (not
the identerati or general geek space) - in fact I assert that most
consumers don't even recognize an "identity" in the sense that we
describe it.
 
We run the risk of spending too much time trying to educate consumers
about "Identity" (so we can convince them they should go choose a
provider)  rather than just using it to solve their immediate problems
(although they probably still wont pay for it). In this sense, the
current facebook usage model is perfectly appropriate. Just because we
love the concept of OpenID is not reason it needs to be promoted as a
first level concept in the UX - the more we can hide here the more
likely we are to succeed.
 
Peter is right - other than a small demographic, consumers will not pay
for security - having worked with identity and security for 15 years I
have lots of painfully acquired proof points that support this.
 
Asking consumers to pay for "identities" makes no sense. There are valid
revenue models here, but you must step back from just an authentication
or consumer focus and think about a broader ecosystem to see it. 
 
The challenge we are facing right now is bootstrapping the ecosystem. I
talked about this in my "Steady State of the Identity Universe" theorem.
Most of the value propositions we expect to accrue to consumers or
relying parties only really work when you have very large scale of both
consumers and relying parties - we are not even close to that yet. 
 
Startups will find it nearly impossible to be successful IDPs - they can
not get enough funding to cover the ramp in consumer acquisition obtain
sufficient scale to be sufficient to monetize their identity assets. If
you only cover half of one percent of the consumers that might possibly
come to a relying party site, you have a hard time arguing for you
value. This is at a least a 3 beer discussion about establishing value
props and trust with consumers - but name a bar and I will regale you on
that topic.
 
The advent of the Open Government program utilizing consumer identities
MAY help change the game - but it is way too early to tell yet. At the
very least it has woken the community up to the harder concepts such as
assurance levels. How we as IDPs protect consumers in this context has
barely had any discussion... 
 
I think Ben is correct. The value of the identities that we espouse is
determined in significant part by the value of the transaction that a
consumer can engage in.

--Andrew 

Andrew Nash 
Snr Director of Identity Services 
PayPal 
P 408 967 4682 
M 408 406 7459 

 

________________________________

From: openid-general-bounces at lists.openid.net
[mailto:openid-general-bounces at lists.openid.net] On Behalf Of Eddy Nigg
(StartCom Ltd.)
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 3:18 AM
Cc: openid-general at lists.openid.net
Subject: Re: [OpenID] FreeYourID shutting down



On 08/26/2009 01:14 PM, Ben Laurie:


	I have to ask the obvious question: why would anyone want to pay
for
	an identity that we are repeatedly told should not be used for
	anything of value?
	
	  


Fantastic! That's a good one! :-)


Regards 	
 	
Signer: 	 Eddy Nigg, StartCom Ltd. <http://www.startcom.org> 	
XMPP: 	 startcom at startcom.org	
Blog: 	 Join the Revolution! <http://blog.startcom.org> 	
Twitter: 	 Follow Me <http://twitter.com/eddy_nigg> 	
 	

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