What's wrong with OpenID? It hasn't taken over the world. | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong with OpenID? It hasn't taken over the world.

quora.com

18 pointsbensummers4 comments

Take the average user, the kind of person who has a Facebook account and shops on Amazon, but who doesn't know their browser has a "view source" option in the menus.

Show that person an OpenID login and ask them to figure it out.

10 times out of 10 they will give up and either A) create a new user ID without OpenID, B) not register at all, or C) use Facebook Connect.

People seek the path of least resistance. The average person does not see a tangible benefit to OpenID, and it's easier to ignore it than to take the time to figure out what it is or how to use it.

Want an example? Try the link for "Get an OpenID" http://openid.net/get-an-openid/

Show that to your aunt, and see what she does when faced with that page.

Whenever I start talking/thinking about Yet Another Website That Requires User Profiles, I go to OpenID and inevitably there is an issue. Here are some things that have held me back recently:

  * No support for iPhone/Android/etc apps
  * Users may be firewalled in, without access to google.com, etc
  * Facebook does not support OpenID directly
  * All users would be working for a particular org who is not an OpenID provider
  * Not all providers support discovery yet
  * Hybrid approach feels wrong for new websites, 
    but so does making users sign up for an account 
    with a third party first

I use it for my own accounts, but don't recommend it to others yet.

Rant article, poorly reasoned points, simply makes assumptions without backing them up.

OpenID login can make logins possible with two clicks, and it is possible to use a hybrid approach.

Perhaps but I think he still makes some good points. From the average user's perspective the implications of providing a user name and password are totally clear and the process is completely under the user's control. The security implications of using a third party site to do some kind of behind-the-scenes techno-magic are completely unfathomable.

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