Sunday, March 02, 2008

OpenID: Its only a matter of time (I hope)

I read this article a few weeks ago and it finally got me to research and understand what OpenID is and how it's supposed to work. Here are my thoughts....
It would be so awesome to be able to sign into one account and have access to all your different online profiles. It sounds like a brilliant idea but as the article says it will take a lot of time.
"OpenID looks like it’s going to be a winner, so big companies making their user accounts OpenID compatible is a good hedge. Everyone, of course, wants to be an ID issuer, since they get to “own” the user. Less attractive is allowing users from other sites to log into your services, so don’t expect that functionality to come for some time."
I, for one, would definitely be more willing to sign up for some sort of forum or random discussion group if I could use my OpenID and not have to create a new profile. In case you haven't noticed, you can comment on this blog (and any other blogspot site) with your OpenID which is pretty cool.
The only thing that worries me is the security of this thing. What if someone somewhere is able to hack into your OpenID account and then suddenly has all your information for all your online profiles. That could really suck.
But overall it would make the online experience much easier and I'm all for that.

No comments: