Uno de Waal

Uno de Waal’s online space covering everything about web2.0, social networks and internet related developments in South Africa and how it fits in with the rest of the world.

Facebook is the now the new OpenID

Uno as Ideas, Online, Web2.0

Jun|10|2007

Microformat logoWhat happens when you silo your information in one place? It doesn’t get updated. Taking a personal perspective, I’ve never updated any of my “Favourite movies, Favourite Music, etc etc” on any of my social networks. And even if I did, it would become outdated in a week. Some people manage it, and some don’t.

Taking a page from Adam Smith, it makes a lot more sense to keep your information in specialist sites. Last.fm for my music, Flickr for my photos, Youtube for Videos, del.icio.us for my bookmarks, LinkedIn for my business profile. It is better because these sites specialise in your information and what to do with that information. Using Facebook for your CV is a really bad idea, not only because there are lots of photo’s of you doing all kinds of things in the dark (on FB), but also because it has a poor structure for something like a CV.

OpenID is like the keys to your car.
Microformats are an attempt to make sure that everyone is driving on the right (left) hand side of the road.

What is OpenID?Dick Hardt

OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. It is aimed at solving the problem of Web single sign-on. How does the problem of web single sign-on affect you? Well, if you struggle with keeping track of different usernames and passwords at different websites where you have an account, OpenID can help you. With OpenID you will be assigned a standard username (typically a URL or an i-name, similar to an email address) that you can use on all sites that support OpenID.

Credit

What are Microformats?Microformats standardise the way that information is stored. It makes data machine readable - everyone agrees on a specific way to present information. Restaurant Reviews then follow a set pattern (location, price, ambience, etc etc).

Further, the benefits op OpenID is having a single sign-on (SSO): all sites basically have your data, but they can only access it when you give permission. The data is stored in a single space, and more importantly, it is signified as your data. Sort of like a passport or identity book.

Now, along comes Facebook.

Last.fm and iLike have introduced their applications on the Facebook platform. I’ve been a Last.fm user for ages and this now allows me to share my music profile. And it adds a little to my online Identity, my Identity2.0. I’m allowed to still use the specialist sites for my online identity, but I can now bring them all together in one space.

Person asks: So, who are you? Easy, look at my Facebook profile.

No more sending people to 10 different sites on who you are, it’s all possible in one space now. And not only the form of links to your sites, the actual content is there. iLike Justice, Simian, Plump DJ’s, etc etc. And it uses the massive traction that FB already has to broaden the connections between people and tastes.

OpenID was an attempt to do this, but for the masses who aren’t tech savvy and who want nothing to do with anything 2.0 this will become the de facto preference for showing your Identity2.0. Even if they don’t know it.

Facebook constructs your Identity, without the need for microformats. The only place where it is still lacking is in transferring information. As I have it, OpenID wants to make it easier to switch between iLike and Last.fm - something which has been notoriously difficult. Even the move from Myspace over to Facebook takes much longer than expected and would have been much easier if all that information had been stored in microformats.

(Image: Dick Hardt)
My prediction:
Facebook will become a defacto identity manager amongst the general internet population, unless some big names adopt OpenID as standard it will struggle to compete with the massive userbase that Facebook will build.

Interesting reads:

Dick Hardt on Who is the Dick on my site?
CEO of Sip and a seminal resource on Identity2.0 (he owns the domain!)

Tiara - More on Myspace as an identity construction tool.

Walkah
Also references Dick Hardt, speaks a bit about the Facebook Apps as well.

Hard CandyAs a side note, I saw Hard Candy today which deals with online identity in bizarre ways.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

 

 

Edit: I just re-read this and realise how disjointed it is. I’ve had a hectic weekend ok!



12 Responses

  1. Steven Livingstone

    11|Jun|2007

    I dunno - i am having some conversations around products with some people interested in integrating OpenID into them. They wouldn’t be interested in using Facebook.

    It’s hard enough getting sites on the web to use just a distributed authentication technology - tying that to a particular commercial site owning the data is something i can’t see happening. It’s very cool for some things, but it’s not a general purpose technology much like OpenID.

    There are already some big names using OpenID - AOL and Sun. I can’t see them moving to Facebook.

    What happens when the next Facebook comes along? What about LinkedIn and the other social nets we know and love (well, some of).

    Most layman people i talk with just want to be able to log into different sites without 50 passwords :)

    I’d like to see us just being able to log into different sites first.

  2. Uno

    11|Jun|2007

    Hey Steven,
    Thanks a lot for dropping by.

    I can understand what you mean when you say that many people won’t be interested in using Facebook, it is difficult to transfer your information around and Facebook also has horrible privacy protection measures (hearsay, I might add).

    When I mean when I say “it will replace OpenID” (which I don’t really see happening in the strict sense) is that the general internet population does not want to know anything about open standards, keeping your data in proprietory datahouses, etc etc. They want a single place where they can sign in, and have millions of services build around that, and at the moment Facebook serves this purpose. Picking between Last.fm or iLike is literally just one click.

    And this is where the Identity2.0 part comes in.
    1: You can’t fake your friends
    Friends form part of your identity and constuct a social-peer-review system in a way.
    2: Easily add your personality interests
    Facebook is merely a portal to and manager for your identity. It serves to aggregate the different information on different sites, giving the other person a view into you as person.

    That’s where I see it going. I agree with you, I’d like to OpenID take the upper hand. Would’t it be a good idea for someone to build an OpenID Facebook application?

    If we can get Facebook to adopt microformats then it wouldn’t be a problem to import from one network to the next. But why on earth would a site want to give up the biggest stickiness factor it has?

  3. People Over Process » links for 2007-06-16

    16|Jun|2007

    […] Facebook is the now the new OpenID (tags: via:ceperez openid facebook identity identity2.0) […]

  4. Basic Thinking Blog » Facebook F8: das erste deutsche Angebot in Sicht

    20|Jun|2007

    […] am Rande: Facebook is the now the new OpenID (via lost and found) weitere Artikel: « Blog-Einnahmen Umfrage: 146 || Trackback-URL […]

  5. Lukas R.

    20|Jun|2007

    The basic technologies like OpenID and Microformats do exist, but still the usage patterns for decentralized social networking, data exchange and “open mashups” are just at a beginning. It’s too complicated for the average user, but this will get better, too. Facebooks platform is not the final goal, it is just a step on the way. It’s great, but so was e.g. Friendster and people moved to MySpace and Facebook as they got better. I believe that one day OpenID and related technologies will be ubiquitous.

  6. Wird Facebook OpenID ersetzen, noch bevor OpenID sich auf breiter Front durchgesetzt hat? | OpenID Blog Germany

    24|Jun|2007

    […] logische Umkehrschluß einiger Blogger (z.B. Uno de Waal ) lautet kurz gesagt: Wenn ich mit meinem Facebook Login nahtlos unter einer Oberfläche alle meine […]

  7. Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Yet another reason why we need a single, trusted, and protected identity system

    28|Jul|2007

    […] As an industry we need a single identity and network systems, in fact this was discussed many times last night at the Techcrunch party. I know there are some tools and technologies out there, Tantek suggested Microformats could help, others have suggested identiyy widgets, or existing networks like LinkedIn, well, I suggested Facebook (I’m not the only one). […]

  8. Facebook’s mail as a replacement for e-mail and a replacement for OpenID at Uno de Waal

    30|Jul|2007

    […] while back I wrote about how Facebook could become the defacto Identity 2.0 provider for a lot of people if OpenID […]

  9. (de)railed » Blog Archive » Social Networks vs Identity Providers

    07|Aug|2007

    […] for a while, and comments on this post lead me to Uno’s blog where he has two posts, “Facebook is now the new OpenID” and “Facebook as an replacement for email and OpenID“. I agree with their points […]

  10. Kevin Fox

    07|Aug|2007

    Beyond AOL and SUN, LiveJournal and Netscape support OpenID, and Microsoft is planning on supporting OpenID with InfoCards via CardSpace. Digg has also announced support for OpenID.

    With the recent work Facebook has done with Open Source community I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw OpenID support on Facebook in the future…

  11. Mer om varför Facebook låser in oss | Mothugg

    20|Aug|2007

    […] Uno de Waal hävdar tvärtom att Facebook är det nya OpenID: Facebook will become a defacto identity manager amongst the general internet population, unless some big names adopt OpenID as standard it will struggle to compete with the massive userbase that Facebook will build. […]

  12. Yahoo Mash: Steps toward consolidating Yahoo web Properties? at Uno de Waal

    17|Sep|2007

    […] like to see a space that works really well with Flickr and Delicious. I’ve been talking about Identity for a while here, some people say OpenID is the way to go, others are a bit skeptical about it. But […]


Leave a reply