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Comment by ddphone | Hacker News Reader

1) It provides access to real identity as much as a fake e-mail account. 2) There are plenty of easy to use pluggable OpenID widgets. 3) Not true. The content is just drowned out by all the other noise generated by all the other publishers clamoring for attention. 4) 5 items from my Amazon shopping list provide more insight than my entire facebook profile.

Facebook Connect is no better than the open alternatives to identity management but as usual the open alternatives have a PR problem because the user experience is just as seamless but somehow publishers are convinced that flooding the user's facebook stream is going to bring them traffic.

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The user experience for OpenID is NOT just as seamless as Facebook Connect, and to claim as such is absurd.

Check out how stackexchange handles the experience and then we'll see who's absurd nub.

1) StackExchange - Identity (username/password) that is site-specific to utilize an individual website. This has typically been standard practice for the majority of the web's existence. 2) Google - Identity connected to Gmail and/or Google services. 3) Yahoo - Identity connected to Yahoo Mail and/or Yahoo services. 4) Facebook - Identity connected to social networking service. 5) myOpenID - Identity connected to... what exactly?

People have a reason to use their accounts on Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail/Live, Facebook, Twitter, and etc. The reason why Facebook Connect has been successful is that it is an extension of an identity that many people already use on a daily basis. As long as OpenID remains just an identity provider, it will continue to lose ground. This will especially be the case in the realm of mobile, where cell phones can provide person-specific solutions in a manner that desktops so far cannot.

1) Apple was choosing between Facebook Connect and Twitter Connect for their account integration. 2) Android will naturally use Google accounts as a first choice. 3) Windows Phone will primarily use Live accounts. 4) HP/Palm and RIM need to figure out what they are going to do in this space. 5) Facebook has the ability to leverage Android for a Facebook Phone if they so choose. Currently they are instead trying to become ubiquitous across all platforms. 6) OpenID is nowhere to be found.

We will continue to see integration of this nature across all platforms. OpenID simply does not have the leverage to be successful in the long run. They're still fighting the battle in the browser, while the war is already moving higher up to the device itself.

You sir are full of hot air. All those services have as many fake and malicious users as they do real ones and claiming a user's digital presence in sandboxes owned by corporate entities is an extension of their real identity does not give enough credit to the users of those sandboxes.

Perception is reality.

Actually he's right. The typical user (which none of us here are) has one account on FB (and "maybe" a Twitter account). That account they use to connect to friends, family, whatever. They see a Facebook Connect logo on some site they want to comment on, they gonna use what's familiar.

> People have a reason to use their accounts on Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail/Live, Facebook, Twitter, and etc. […] As long as OpenID remains just an identity provider, it will continue to lose ground.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. TTBOMK, Google, Yahoo!, and Windows Live ID are all also OpenID providers. E.g., the Isotropic online Dominion server allows users to “log in with a Google or Yahoo! account” with an OpenID backend.

So if your thesis is that people reject OpenID because they can't extend their identities from those existing accounts, I don't see how that's the case, unless the OPs have restrictions I'm unaware of. (People might not know they can identify themselves with those accounts, which I think is a real problem, but a separate one.)

My thesis is not that people reject OpenID for that reason, it's that OpenID exists as an ethereal add-on to other services. That is to say: it does not exist in and of itself. Facebook Connect is an extension of my Facebook identity. Twitter Connect is an extension of my Twitter identity. OpenID is NOT simply an extension of the listed providers in the same manner.

I'll illustrate the point as such: My username is Sayter. 1) Go find my Facebook. 2) Then go find my Twitter. 3) Now go find my OpenID. You immediately know where to go for the first two, and in fact can type in the url's for my Facebook and Twitter accounts directly. But how about my OpenID? Is it my Gmail? Yahoo account? Windows Live account? All of the above? Whichever I use the most? Or is it the OpenID that I have on one my domains? My identity for OpenID is fragmented (I'm not even sure how many I have, honestly) and does not exist in a single space, while Facebook and Twitter do exist in single spaces (assuming I only have one Facebook/Twitter of course, but that possibility was simplified for the sake of argument).

That is a non-trivial problem that Facebook and Twitter have (mostly) solved, while OpenID is still struggling with it.

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