Heavy Hitters Jumping On OpenID Bandwagon, Finally

OpenID technology is a viable way to make handling your online identities easier and more secure. It has been slowly gaining momentum, helped recently by beleaguered company Yahoo's adoption of an OpenID style log in for its many web properties. OpenID got another boost recently when a slew of heavy hitters finally decided to jump on the OpenID bandwagon.

In addition to Yahoo, the OpenID Foundation's board can now count Microsoft, Google, IBM and VerisSign among its board members and supporters. That's fantastic news for the web user like myself who is confounded by far too many log in identities and passwords. OpenID simplifies the task of not only remembering your log in for a site, but for keeping the log in(s) secure as well.

Recently I wrote about Yahoo's bid for an OpenID based system, and how disappointed I was that they didn't have a way to merge your Yahoo accounts into an existing OpenID. Instead they require you to create a new OpenID using your Yahoo log in information. This means that it isn't a true OpenID for people like myself who have already been using OpenID since its inception.

Hopefully, an OpenID board stocked with the heavy hitters of the industry will help make OpenID technology more uniform, even among sites already using it. Part of the problem OpenID has had in gaining ground among the average computer user is that there hasn't been a uniform way to use it. With multiple site available for creating an OpenID account, as well as different sites handling it different ways, you have a recipe for confusion.

Since OpenID is a technology with a mission statement of making your online life easier, it can't afford confusion in how it is implemented. It already has to overcome the issue of a general public who don't really understand what it is for yet, or how it can help them. Making it hard to use only makes the marketing situation for OpenID harder to overcome.

Microsoft is the king of conformity, so the input from that end should help bring uniformity to OpenID. Yahoo understands fresh, fun content and how to tap in to the market of people who need to have OpenID made more accessible to the average person. Google is talented at, well, taking over the internet, so that should help promote OpenID pretty much… everywhere. IBM comes at things from a hardware end, which has interesting possibilities for OpenID applications from outside the Internet.

All in all I'd say the OpenID Foundation added some solid board members that should certainly help iron out the kinks it has faced in becoming a new web standard. The Board also includes individuals from such companies as Vidoop, SixApart, Sxip, Wikia, NetMesh and Parity as well as individuals well versed in tech. You can see the full Board list on the OpenID Foundation site here.

According to the OpenID Foundation:

“In 2008, we can expect to see a larger focus on making OpenID even more accessible to a mainstream audience, the development of a worldwide trademark usage policy (much like the Jabber Foundation and Mozilla have done), and a larger international focus on working with the OpenID communities in Asia and Europe.”