Why don’t more sites use OpenID?

Taken from the I Want My OpenID web site:

“Your OpenID is your passport to all websites requiring a username and
password. Once you create your OpenID, you’ll never need to go through
the registration process again, with sites that support OpenID.”

In other words you create an OpenID account. When you get to a site that supports OpenID, you don’t need to register. You can straight away log in using your OpenID URL which looks something like: http://claimid.com/stii For users its like being registered with all sites that supports OpenID already! No more painfull registration processes. No more verifying of your email address. No more remembering 10000 different username and password combinations. One username and one password for everything. That simple.

Yet, very little sites still support it! Locally in South Africa I have not yet seen ONE site that supports it! (I might be wrong. If so, it would be kind of you if you can tell me of sites using it!) It makes life simpler. For your users as well as for you! Could it be that we are still hell bent on collecting a database of email addresses? Or that our internet users is simply not up to date with the fact that there is such a service available? I don’t know. That is actually no excuse since you can easily support both local and OpenID registrations like Ma.gnolia.com does.

If there is two things we in South Africa should do to become one of the frontrunners in the technology arena, I would say it should be implementing OpenID and using microformats as a standard.

I must add, that it takes a bit more than your average HTML “programmer” with a little PHP knowledge to implement the use of the OpenID service. However I refuse to believe that we do not have the skills and/or knowledge capacity to do it! No, sadly, I think it is just a service that is being overlooked.

Hash asked recently (based on our kupa announcement) “how [do] you plan to help get more people using microformats.” I would love to say we’re going to drag people kicking and screaming into acceptance, but that NEVER works. We need to highlight the real value of doing it. There must be major incentives for people implementing these technologies, else people will look at it and say “Hmmm, nice.” and simply carry on doing things as they are used to. Another way to do it is to start focussing on your users instead of only on your service/product. “It would make my user’s lives a lot easier if I implement OpenID.” Similar services is popping up all over the show. Which one will win the popularity contest? Sadly, probably the one with the best marketing campaign. Yet how do you focus a kick-ass campaign if you focus only on yourself and not the benefit to your users?! Its an education process. A big one that lies ahead of us. And that is what makes our industry so exiting!

technorati tags:openid, claimid, semanticweb, web3.0

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11 Comments to "Why don’t more sites use OpenID?"

• Imel said: On 03/22/2007 at 9:56 am

  Hey Stii, you obviously missed my site
  I installed the Wordpress OpenID plug-in last week, but so far it seems that technology is letting the idea down.
  I have had reports from visitors that the OpenID authentication does not work as expected, resulting in them to use the traditional methods.
  Hopefully these technical issues will soon be a thing of the past, as I agree that enough is enough with all these accounts, passwords, etc.

• Stii said: On 03/22/2007 at 10:37 am

  Not true Imel. I registerd/logged into imel.co.za effortlessly without any complications! Could be that those visitors did something wrong and the trick would be to figure out what so that it could be rectified.

• Imel said: On 03/22/2007 at 10:51 am

  OK, fair enough. The problem must be elsewhere then.
  Talking of authentication, perhaps there should be standard amongst blogs as to how to authenticate commentators.
  Some allow anonymous commenting (like this one), others require registration, etc.
  As not all supports OpenID it becomes a real pain……

• Stii said: On 03/22/2007 at 11:44 am

  That would have been great, wouldn’t it? I agree 100% with you.

• Dmitry Shechtman said: On 03/22/2007 at 3:11 pm

  I’m not sure about South African OpenID consumers, but something good is definitely going on out there…

• Charl van Niekerk » Blog: ClaimID said: On 03/22/2007 at 3:58 pm

  [...] inspired me with one of his recent posts to register an account at ClaimID. After opening the site, I remembered that I actually already [...]

• stii.za.net » Blog Archive » Afrigator HowTo: Sign up using your OpenID said: On 05/22/2007 at 6:53 am

  [...] If you do not know what OpenID is, please read this first. [...]

• stii.za.net » Blog Archive » Afrigator HowTo: Logging in with your OpenID said: On 05/22/2007 at 7:43 am

  [...] If you do not know what OpenID is, please read this first. [...]

• Da Brazilian Gangsta said: On 02/23/2008 at 12:57 pm

  Yo! I saw no Open ID login in your page. Hypocrisy?

• Stii said: On 02/25/2008 at 8:28 am

  @Da Brazilian: Not really. There is no need for anyone to login on these pages, so why put OpenID or anything else for that matter on this page?

• Richard said: On 03/02/2008 at 9:11 am

  http://www.unicef.org/voy/discussions/member.php?u=43827

Spit it out!

Filed in: Semantic Web by: Stii