[Marketing] Food for thought

[Bill Washburn]

This is taken from...
http://ask.metafilter.com/66177/Isnt-that-what-OpenID-is-for

Isn't that what OpenID is for?
July 3, 2007 3:16 PM I have a potential web development client who wants
users of their site to be able to log in to their site using existing IDs
from AOL, Facebook, Google, Windows Live, Yahoo, and other social networking
sites and have their site keep them logged in at the other sites. Is this
possible?

Isn't that what OpenID <http://openid.net/> is for?
posted by kirkaracha <http://www.metafilter.com/user/10648> to computers &
internet <http://ask.metafilter.com/category/1> (8 comments total) 7 users
marked this as a favorite <http://ask.metafilter.com/favorited/66177>
   Yeah, it's pretty much what OpenID is for, tho there are other mechanisms
with which you can interface with some, tho not all of the sites you've
listed. I'm in the middle of a project with similar requirements, and it's
huge. I wish I had a team.

At any rate, without knowing more about the project requirements, I would
suggest steering your client toward enabling their site with OpenID and
looking into interfacing specifically with AOL, Yahoo, Google and Facebook
if they need more in-depth user information from site to site.
posted by annathea <http://www.metafilter.com/user/824> at 3:29
PM<http://ask.metafilter.com/66177/Isnt-that-what-OpenID-is-for#994019>on
July 3


 Supporting these things would be your problem even if OpenID is used. Some
can be done:

AOL with OpenID <http://dev.aol.com/aol-and-63-million-openids>, Yahoo with
OpenID (third party) <http://idproxy.net/>, Facebook
API<http://developers.facebook.com/>
.
posted by genghis <http://www.metafilter.com/user/39057> at 3:33
PM<http://ask.metafilter.com/66177/Isnt-that-what-OpenID-is-for#994022>on
July 3


 I work with the folks who created OpenID initially, and we've deployed a
couple million OpenID identities -- this is exactly what the system is
designed for.

For the specific brands you've listed, only AOL provides OpenID identities
for their AOL and AIM users. There is a third-party service that will allow
you to use Yahoo logins via OpenID, which is a little complicated for most
normal people, and Microsoft's CardSpace identity system will accept OpenIDs
but doesn't use them for sign-in.

That being said, there are over 100 million OpenIDs already created, so
there's starting to be critical mass, and you can fake some of the other
stuff using Google's and Facebook's and Yahoo's proprietary authentication
APIs.

The real question is what benefit single sign-on will provide to your users
- it's a tough concept to explain, and usually makes the most sense when
they see some benefit (in terms of reputation or authentication or social
network) for bringing their identity from elsewhere.
posted by anildash <http://www.metafilter.com/user/508> at 3:42
PM<http://ask.metafilter.com/66177/Isnt-that-what-OpenID-is-for#994028>on
July 3


 phpmyID <http://siege.org/projects/phpMyID/> might be useful for your
project
posted by acro <http://www.metafilter.com/user/44107> at 4:16
PM<http://ask.metafilter.com/66177/Isnt-that-what-OpenID-is-for#994049>on
July 3


 Why would logging into one site log them out of another?
posted by rhizome <http://www.metafilter.com/user/35452> at 5:23
PM<http://ask.metafilter.com/66177/Isnt-that-what-OpenID-is-for#994088>on
July 3


 *The real question is what benefit single sign-on will provide to your
users - it's a tough concept to explain, and usually makes the most sense
when they see some benefit (in terms of reputation or authentication or
social network) for bringing their identity from elsewhere.*

I've been involved one way or another in 3 different "single sign-on"
projects. It's an idea that seems to crop up over and over without ever
taking over. It's the kind of idea that sounds more useful the less time
you've had to really think through what's in it for users, and how it would
work for them in any detail. anildash speaks wisdom, for this to be viable
one imagines there has to be more to the project than just "save the trouble
of logging in more than once", what else is needed, what other data has to
be transfered from facebook etc to your clients site?
posted by scheptech <http://www.metafilter.com/user/18655> at 8:00
PM<http://ask.metafilter.com/66177/Isnt-that-what-OpenID-is-for#994187>on
July 3
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