Kwiqq (seriously) adopting OpenID

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OpenID has been the topic of the week in the Kwiqq offices. OpenID for people who are less aware of it is a shared identity service, which allows Internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, single sign-on, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site. OpenID is a decentralized, free and open standard that lets users control the amount of personal information they provide.‘ read more.

The reason it has been a topic of debate is because there are clear advantages of it: Web wide identity, lowering the barrier to entry, safe passwords etc. Although at the same time there are serious implications for less technology savvy users in understanding the concept. This inturn requires implementation of OpenID to be very clear else there could be possible usability issues. Dan James is an expert on usability and on speaking to him last week he was telling me how OpenID during registration and signing in could be problematic. The obvious problem is that when a user logs in without OpenID, all the authentication happens on the site. Now when a user is pointed to an OpenID provider to authenticate the site, users can potentially be unsure as to what is going on. For instance, I can’t see my parents using OpenID just as yet.

Another flaw which Dan rightly pointed out was, if for instance an OpenID provider shuts down how will the user log on ? All authorisation currently takes place on the site of the openID provider. The consequences could be even more drastic if the user only has an OpenID associated to the account.

But the OpenID evangelist have always been, strangely enough, very open about the issues :). They feel that with time these problems will be ironed out.

Implications of OpenID on Social Networking

The obvious benefits of OpenID is the ability to sign up to several social networks without remembering several username/passwords. It is great as well for people who want to be identified through out their social web and build a reputation. Although there are some sites you don’t want to be identified on. Sites where you would turn on the silent surfer feature of Firefox. Michael Arrington feels this is generally for porn sites *cough cough*.

Anyway I digress ! OpenID is a cool innovation and we have decided to get behind it too. To the extent that we will actively recommend OpenID going forwards. Obviously there will be cases where this technology wouldn’t make sense but there are far too many advantages of the technology to miss out on !

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