[OpenID] Flickr users can now login with a Google account via OpenID

[Chris Messina]

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 8:10 PM, Dick Hardt <dick.hardt at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the explanation Allen on how it works.
>
> To summarize, this helps new users to Flickr that do NOT have a Yahoo!
> account but do have a Google account and think that it would be easier to
> use their existing Google account rather than creating a new Yahoo! account.
> Correct?
>
>From my basic testing, this does appear to be the use case addressed.


> It would be interested to hear how many users this affected and if they
> have issues authenticating when they come back. Since it is not a feature
> available to any other user except new users that used this method, I would
> expect very low utilization and likely confusion on the assumption that most
> savvy users that might want a Flickr account already have them -- and that
> initial utilization will be identirati that are checking it out.
>
I would be very interested to see what stats Yahoo/Flickr is willing to
share on how the Google OpenID flow increasing conversion and sign up.
Obviously the ideal is to someday enable people to use any account that they
already have to register, sign up, and sign in, but as you mentioned Dick,
we're a long ways from that today — in large part due to uncertainty around
the UX. If we had better data from this new flow, perhaps we could improve
the user flow to the point where we could quantifiably demonstrate the
benefits of adopting OpenID in the wild (and on a mainstream site).

In any case, I'm glad to see this continued progress. It's not everything
that we're hoping for, but I think it's somewhat unreasonable to imagine
that any of the large service providers will be ready to just flip the
switch and move entirely over to federated login without a more graduated
approach to help users ease into that new situation.

Chris

P.S. Props to Allen Tom et al for their diligence and work on this!

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 6:12 PM, Allen Tom <allentomdude at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Dick,
>>
>> The primary goal of the OpenID login feature for Flickr was to *not*
>> confuse the tens of millions of existing Flickr users who already login to
>> Flickr using their Yahoo ID. The goal for the the initial release was to
>> only expose the OpenID feature for new users who do not already have a
>> YahooID, since we wanted to be able to reach new users who did not have a
>> YahooID but did have an OpenID-enabled account.
>>
>> The original prototype of the OpenID-enabled Flickr login screen checked
>> the user's browser cookies to see if the anyone had previously used a
>> YahooID on the browser. If so, the Google OpenID button would be
>> de-emphasized, since we did not want to potentially confuse an existing user
>> (who already knows how to login to Flickr with a YahooID)  by presenting an
>> additional Login option.  We also experimented with the x-has-session
>> interface defined in the OpenID User Interface Extension to determine if the
>> user was currently logged into Google - if the user did not have have a
>> YahooID AND was currently logged into Google, we would put Google as the
>> default Login option - in this case, where the user did not appear to have a
>> YahooID AND was currently logged into Google - the Flickr login screen
>> would prioritize the Google OpenID option as the primary call to action -
>> even above the YahooID login option.
>>
>> We did experiment with account linking - meaning that if the user already
>> had a Flickr account bound to a YahooID, and then logged in with a Google
>> Account - we had a flow for the user to link the Google account with their
>> existing Flickr account, without having to create a new Flickr account.
>> Unfortunately, the resulting flow was very complex. Given that the primary
>> business objective was to open Flickr up to users who did not already have a
>> YahooID, and to get these new users out of the registration flow and engaged
>> in the Flickr product ASAP, we decided to defer the account linking flow to
>> a future release - after we had a chance to observe the real world
>> performance of the OpenID flows. In the meantime, we decided to put in logic
>> into the Flickr Login screen to de-emphasize the OpenID flow for users who
>> probably already had a YahooID, with the hope that these existing users
>> continue to login to Flickr with their YahooID without potentially being
>> distracted by the new OpenID flow which was not intended for them.
>>
>> Since I no longer work at Yahoo, I'm not quite sure about the exact
>> details of the finished product that launched this week, but that what the
>> thinking that we had while I was on the project before I left.
>>
>> Hope that make sense!
>> Allen
>>
>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Dick Hardt <dick.hardt at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> I could not find any way to use any of my Google accounts to log into my
>>>> existing Flickr account -- I only see where I can create a new Flickr
>>>> account with a Google account.
>>>>
>>>> While it is nice to see progress -- IMHO we are a LONG ways from solving
>>>> identity from the user's point of view -- and that leads to my concern --
>>>> although it was alot of work to get this done -- I would be surprised if
>>>> your average user would consider this an improvement -- and may lead to more
>>>> confusion as they become uncertain as to which provider they have used at
>>>> which site.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> general mailing list
> general at lists.openid.net
> http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-general
>
>


-- 
Chris Messina
Open Web Advocate, Google

Personal: http://factoryjoe.com
Follow me on Buzz: http://buzz.google.com/chrismessina
...or Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrismessina

This email is:   [ ] shareable    [X] ask first   [ ] private
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openid.net/pipermail/openid-general/attachments/20101031/3210c6c6/attachment.html>