Chris does a good job of highlighting how online identity ought to work. I like the concept of abstracting identities into an anonymous identifier. In this case its a URL. That URL would be under your control, and access to information behind that URL would be under your control. This is a good concept, and is the basis for OpenID.
It’s high time we moved to URL-based identifiers | FactoryCity
So screen scrape factoryjoe.com all you want. I even have a starter hcard waiting for you, with all the contact information I care to publicly expose. Anything more than that? Well, you’re going to have to ask more politely to get it. You’ve got my URL, now, tell me, what else do you really need?
I get the whole concept of being announced everywhere, yet remaining private. OpenID goes some way towards that. The problem with OpenID is that the person behind the URL is not reputable. Let me explain. Anyone can set up their own OpenID server, and provide their OpenID URL for identification. For example my OpenID is http://thebankwatch.com. I can use that anywhere that OpenID is accepted. That is very handy for me. But the location I am logging in to has no idea who is behind
http://thebankwatch.com.
How do we associate trust with OpenID? This is a key question for me.
2 responses so far ↓
Chris Messina // January 6, 2008 at 8:37 am
The answer is to leverage the social graph around various OpenID identifiers… therefore raising the value of using your OpenID identifier for good or reputable acts, since, arguably, the friends that link to any given OpenID who YOU link to as friends, might be relatively more trustworthy.
Colin // January 6, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Thanks for stopping by Chris. The network effect of more people using OpenID and how they act while using it will certainly help. It will be interesting to see how OpenID and its use will evolve.
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