[Marketing] Revamping the Website

[Thomas Huhn (Solution Media)]

Hi David, hi Simon, hi marketers,

we´re glad you´re coming up with this topic and we absolutely agree with
both of you. We´re thinking about the same things now for a while but we
would like to propose a different solution to you - let me explain why:

The number of OpenID users - as well as the number of IdP's and RP's -
is growing quickly and some people even envisage OpenID becoming the
standard SSO system rather soon. However many people still don't know
that they have an OpenID (e.g. AOL users) already and there are also
people - even tech savvy ones - who want to test OpenID but have
problems finding an IdP (e.g.
http://www.bomega.com/2007/06/10/openid-not-for-me and
http://franticindustries.com/blog/2007/05/15/advice-to-openid-give-me-a-signup-button/
)
and eventually give in or even dismiss OpenID.

While the OpenID community is providing a lot of information to
developers (openid.net
,
openidenabled.com) end users have not been targeted well enough ( e.g. a
very comprehensive list of IdP's is hidden in the openid.net wiki).
Though they are critical to OpenID's success. Nothing is accomplished if
there are 63 million AOL users who don't know about their OpenID, what
it is and where they can use it.

We - Thomas Huhn ( http://openiddirectory.com ) and Carsten Pötter (
http://notsorelevant.com ) -
think this situation has to change. We would like to provide a non-profit
site named Spread OpenID ( http://spreadopenid.org ) -
which will help users finding relevant information about OpenID. This site
should be solely focused on end users and
would give us the chance to keep any technical or developer information
totally separated on openid.net and openidenabled.com.

We talked about a concept for such a site and this is the first proposal
that we want to come up with:

- making things easy to understand: explaining OpenID (benefits and simple
step-by-step howto with screenshots)
- talking about peoples concerns: all known pros and cons/problems
(phishing, privacy, ...)
- explaining the buzzwords: SREG, IdP, RP, delegation,...
- helping with the users decicion: IdP comparison chart containing
   - list of links
   - security features
   - privacy
   - IdP's by country: mentioning country specific privacy conditions
   - info about providers (are they trustworthy?)
   - compatibility (OpenID 1.1, SREG, OpenID 2.0 (whenever that is))
   - additional features (identity management, reputation building, browser
integration (just think of providers like claimid, opinity.com, sxipper))

Since OpenID is international we would like to provide information in as
many languages as possible. In a first step all information will be English,
of course (maybe a native speaker could proofread basic articles before
publishing them); we hope to find people translating basic articles to
Russian, Chinese, Polish, French, German (we can do that ourselves, I
guess), Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, and Japanese. We would
also like to provide a resource hosting constant press releases for
journalists
and bloggers who want to write about OpenID. Those people could be a target
for press releases by email
about big news in the community as well.

Other ideas include a
- Spread OpenID button for implementation on websites (this sounds much like
Spread Firefox, doesn't it? ;)),
- user based voting on "we want XYZ to be OpenID enabled", and
- maybe even establishing a task force which will help RP's implementing
OpenID.

We are aware that the OpenID Foundation has started a marketing group
already and that there is a
European branch as well. We don't want to compete with any of those
initiatives, but we want to be pro-active on a field we see an urgent need
for action.
We would like to know if you share our opinion that a project like Spread
OpenID will be beneficial to the community.
And if you think it is, we would like to have your support for using the
name "Spread OpenID" and the OpenID logo,
because the spreadopenid.org site will have an "official character" and
makes no sense without a 100% support from the community.
To make it clear: We don't want to start a project without that support.

We appreciate any proposals and are looking forward for your feedback.

Carsten & Thomas
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