It may soon be possible to log in to all of your various social networks, blogs, email accounts, and other websites under one ”universal login standard”. Currently dubbed OpenID, users will be able to create a single username and password that can be used on any website that supports it.
InternetNews.com reported today that Yahoo, with nearly 250-million registered users, is the latest company to endorse OpenID. The company joins AOL, LiveJournal, Plaxo, Technorati, WordPress, and several others who are behind the initiative so far.
OpenID is also supported by the DataPortability Workgroup, which now includes Google and Facebook. To my knowledge, Google and Facebook have not publicly supported OpenID themselves (please correct me if I’m wrong); by joining the Workgroup it seems they could be headed in that direction.
With so many websites requiring users to login, and so many of these sites offering cross-platform interoperability (think Facebook’s zillions of third-party applications), OpenID seems to me a logical step toward simplifying users’ experience on the web.
Naturally, there are some concerns, mainly to do with privacy and security, and these will need to be dealt with before OpenID can work in the way it’s intended. Nevertheless, expect to hear more about it in the very near future.
February 13, 2008 at 7:50 am |
FYI, Microsoft and VeriSign have hopped on board.