Is OpenID the Future of Web 2.0 Anonymity?

With the popularity of Web 2.0 comes an issue with multiple registrations for its adoptees; interactive sites require log-ins, and you'll soon find your list of log-ins requires a better memory than an elephant, as well as feel like you've given your email address to every person in the world. Stepping in to assist is the OpenID project, which allows you to create a single point of registry for any sites adopting its use, with the ability to create multiple personas to separate identities if you find it necessary.

The OpenID technology itself is totally free; as its creators state:

"Nobody should own this. Nobody's planning on making any money from this. The goal is to release every part of this under the most liberal licenses possible, so there's no money or licensing or registering required to play. It benefits the community as a whole if something like this exists, and we're all a part of the community."

With plug-ins already available for WordPress, and the technology available on LiveJournal, SixApart sites, and last weeks' add-ons AOL (who offers an OpenID to anyone with an AIM screenname) and Digg , blogging seems to be the fastest way for the technology to be adopted. The question, however, is whether pay services like FreeYourID have any chance at profitability, especially when there are already free services available to early adopters. FreeYourID offers a free 90-day trial, after which you will pay $10.95 per year. In contrast, MyOpenID offers a more bare-bones version of the same service for free. It might not be as pretty, but it works, and includes affiliate links to add to your site to encourage others to sign up.

Obviously, the biggest hindrance to widespread acceptance is that there are few large-scale sites and services accepting it. While AOL might be providing IDs, they aren't accepting it, and neither are Yahoo! and Google . The login-in process may also be confusing to users, as it takes you from the site you are currently on to another site to log in, then back to the originating site.

OpenID is not a security device, and isn't intended to be one. However, it does provide a valuable service to those of us who find that a short notecard of usernames and passwords is no longer enough to store all our login information, as well as allowing a single point of reference when you don't want to send your email address and name to every web site under the sun. Implementation on WordPress sites is quick and easy, with no configuration files to edit, and I'm sure that once the bloggers really start implementing it, other larger sites will follow suit. I would love to see a more robust version with security added in the future, but have already implemented it on my own personal blog.

Sources: CenterNetworks, O'Reilly Radar , PRWeb