Login, sign in, ... what?

Chris Messina chris.messina at gmail.com
Thu Nov 12 20:17:52 UTC 2009


I'm of the opinion that OpenID needs to do more than just pair-wise
identity. Especially if we hope to compete in the marketplace.

I look at Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect and Twitter Connect and
think that there's an industry-wide need to establish what "connect"
means...

Recordon wrote up something along these lines previously:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/02/anatomy-of-connect.html

We had the "open stack" brand floating around, but that doesn't actually
give us a set of defined things that developers should be able to take for
granted when building their app. And that's a  fundamental problem that
OpenID needs to address — "lossy identity flows". Facebook provides every
developer essentially equal access to a profile and a list of friends —
these things make it possible to build social apps. OpenID has erred on the
side of privacy and as a result, offers many fewer building blocks to create
social apps. You get login, but not much else — without failing back on
inconsistently supported extensions like SREG and AX.

OpenID is convenient, to be sure, but lacks a compelling economic use case
without bringing additional data with it, like a token to access someone's
Google contacts or a token to use for tweeting on someone's behalf.

OpenID is, therefore, a fundamental building block of social applications,
but the opportunity, it seems is to define a new "product" that we might
call "OpenID Connect" that encapsulates the resources David described in his
post: profile, relationships, content (what I call "data capital"), and
activity [streams].

Chris

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 10:48 AM, Johannes Ernst <jernst+openid.net@
netmesh.us> wrote:

> Now that's an interesting one: "establishing an ongoing deep relationship"
> .... instead of merely logging on.
>
> Does this apply to OpenID in general, too, or just Facebook?
>
> [Opening up a major can of worms here in terms of "what is OpenID" and its
> mission and brand.]
>
>
> On Nov 12, 2009, at 10:30, Luke Shepard wrote:
>
> Yeah, we had this debate last year, and just scrapped it and went with
> Connect. The idea is that "login" or "signup" are too well established and
> fairly limiting- we wanted to give the sense that you were establishing an
> ongoing deep relationship between facebook and the site, not just a one-time
> login thing.
>
> ------------------------------
>  *From*: openid-user-experience-bounces at lists.openid.net <
> openid-user-experience-bounces at lists.openid.net>
> *To*: OpenID user experience <openid-user-experience at lists.openid.net>
> *Cc*: OpenID user experience <user-experience at openid.net>
> *Sent*: Thu Nov 12 10:26:49 2009
> *Subject*: Re: Login, sign in, ... what?
>
> And don't forget Twitter and Facebook's "Connect".
>
> It would be nice if we established a convention and promoted it, but I'm
> not sure that'll happen.
>
> Like profile photo sizes, each site does things a little differently and
> yet the effect of choosing any of the listed options doesn't really effect
> the overall usability of an app.
>
> As well, "sign in" and "log in" no longer mean anything semantically —
> they're just short hand for "give me access to my account" (since "signing
> in" was something you did when you showed up for a field trip at school, and
> "logging in" was something you did on a black screen, green text terminal).
>
> "Connect" is the more interesting language, since it implies an ongoing
> fusing of two resources — where data flows over a "connection"... not unlike
> what happens when you "plug in" a plug to a wall outlet. Until you sever the
> connection, the juice will flow.
>
> I have also seen new language emerging in comment forms that is starting to
> approximate what it means to present an OpenID and confirm ownership of it:
>
> http://flic.kr/p/7eMb8H
>
> Here the language used it "identify yourself via"...
>
> JS-Kit's Echo comment service uses the email metaphor to good, if not
> somewhat strange, effect:
>
> http://flic.kr/p/7fcHwU
> http://js-kit.com/
>
> Anyway, all this is to say that we haven't quite cracked the nut yet as to
> what's really going on with something like OpenID to say that "sign in" or
> "log in" is sufficient. "Connect" is closer, but obscures which data is
> being made available as part of that connection.
>
> I'm glad you brought this up though, since it is something that bears
> inspection.
>
> Chris
>
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 8:27 PM, Johannes Ernst <jernst+openid.net@
> netmesh.us> wrote:
>
>> Informal Survey:
>>
>> Yahoo:
>>        Sign In
>>
>> Google:
>>        Sign in / Sign out
>>
>> Digg:
>>        Login / Logout
>>
>> Slashdot:
>>        Log In / Log Out
>>
>> AOL:
>>        Sign In
>>
>> MySpace:
>>        Log In
>>
>> Facebook:
>>        Login
>>
>> MSN:
>>        Sign in
>>
>> NYTimes:
>>        Log In
>>
>>
>> ... and this isn't even limited to OpenID Log/sign/in. Even capitalization
>> and spacing is different.
>>
>> As part of the OpenID user experience, can we narrow this down? Or is that
>> counter-productive?
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>>
>>
>> Johannes.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> user-experience mailing list
>> user-experience at lists.openid.net
>> http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-user-experience
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Chris Messina
> Open Web Advocate
>
> Personal: http://factoryjoe.com
> Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrismessina
>
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> Diso Project: http://diso-project.org
> OpenID Foundation: http://openid.net
>
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-- 
Chris Messina
Open Web Advocate

Personal: http://factoryjoe.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrismessina

Citizen Agency: http://citizenagency.com
Diso Project: http://diso-project.org
OpenID Foundation: http://openid.net

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