The problem with that model, or so says the OpenID supporters, is that the individuals don’t get to own their identity. Unfortunately though, most individuals don’t even understand what owning their identity is all about. When I added a Facebook Connect widget to AllFacebook last week, I had hundreds of people simply log in out of curiosity. They didn’t realize what was taking place behind the scenes necessarily and simply wanted to see how it worked.

So should OpenID be launching their own widget campaign? Most definitely! The group seems to still be in the process of organizing though (view nominations here). I used to be a huge advocate of OpenID and I honestly believe that there is still a lot of movement going on. Unfortunately though I think the group is over planning and under executing. While some large organizations (Yahoo! included) are supporting the identity standard, there is still a lack of general consumer education. Without that there is no way OpenID can compete with Facebook Connect and other new standards.

So far hundreds if not thousand of sites have implemented OpenID but unfortunately most people don’t know what the service is. One of the main reasons? A lack of a centralized public relations team to spread the word and little incentive for any of the participants to join. It’s a great service but it doesn’t have the more than 120 million (or probably 130 million) users that Facebook now has.

Facebook also ended up with a huge New York Times article earlier this week and that kicked off the buzz about the service. Take a look at the Twitter buzz for Facebook Connect and you’ll see that people are now talking about a service which one week ago was practically unheard of for many. Whether or not that buzz will sustain is another question but it’s clear that Facebook has a very good chance of becoming the default login for many.

It’s also good to keep in mind that a branded single sign on model was attempted before by Microsoft with their Passport network and that failed miserably. The company tried again this year with Microsoft Live ID but that hasn’t seen much traction either. Many tech enthusiasts love to postulate about the day when single sign on becomes mainstream but despite the occasional buzz over the past few years, nothing has really gained traction.

Back in January I wrote about Yahoo supporting OpenID but since then there has been little talk about it. Are users adopting the standard? There’s also the whole issue of trying to be an individual’s OpenID provider and that has resulted in competition among the existing email providers. None of the large companies have bothered to educate users about what OpenID is though so there has been little mainstream adoption.

Facebook on the other hand is simply placing a button which essentially says “sign on with Faebook” and that’s it. It doesn’t require much explaining. So while I believe that Facebook has a great shot at becoming the primary identity provider on the web, there is still a long battle ahead before anything can be possibly called “the standard”. Centralized identity management is an area still ripe for the taking.

This time, a partnership with the Flock browser and Vidoop’s authentication solution will provide a more seamless experience for cross-network applications but for a user’s browsing experience as well. Called the Identity in the Browser open source project, this is an opportunity for all three companies to push OpenID into the next realm.

In that sense, Flock’s browser plays a fairly pivotal role in this three-way partnership. It’s providing a segue for OpenID to permeate further across the web, while linking it back to MySpace, related applications, and all other sites that support OpenID as well. Through the partnership, these three companies are looking to promote better “discovery” of where OpenID sites are available to users, indicating that this is a directed effort towards making OpenID more widely adopted.

As authentication sites like Vidoop provide a number of additional services that work right alongside OpenID, I can understand why it was chosen as one of the partners. For instance, one particular Vidoop feature allows you to set up your own email address to use for OpenID authentication, greatly simplifying the use of OpenID for individual users and increasing its potential for wide-spread adoption.

The IDIB project is also quite indicative of MySpace’s potential position as a catalyst for rapid and wide-spread adoption, as it ties back to MySpace’s Data Availability. “This project perfectly complements our Data Availability efforts and we have a vested interest in seeing OpenID succeed as we are committed to making the Web a more open and social place” says Max Engel, product lead for the MySpace Data Availability Initiative.

This is a significant announcement for Google and for the open web. While I could attempt to place some sort of arbitrary divider between the open web and the social web, for discussion purposes, the social web is working to make the internet more open. As such both are substantially integrated and can be used interchangeably.

How Does Google OpenID Compete With Facebook?

The battle over single sign on is a significant one. If you haven’t been following OpenID and the single sign on trend over the past couple years, here’s a brief summary: users are finding it hard to remember the logins for every site they register for. As such, companies are racing to provide services that make it easy for users to login with their regular email address.

Facebook is preparing to launch their Connect service to the masses, making it possible for users to register for a site by using their Facebook account and without disclosing any personally identifiable information.
The Pros
There are some clear benefits from using Facebook Connect. For one, websites get access to a user’s news feed and the ability to virally distribute content and user activities through that feed. Second, companies get the “benefit” of placing a Facebook login button on their site. Why is this beneficial? Well, Facebook is rapidly becoming one of the most recognized brands on the web.

The Cons
For any company, using Facebook Connect doesn’t solve all your problems. The primary downside of using Facebook Connect is that you don’t get access to personally identifiable information of that user. I want to have access to a user’s email address so I can contact them in the future. Unfortunately Facebook prevents that. If you want to read more on this check out my article from July about Facebook Connect as OpenID without email.

There Can Only Be One Login

So I really haven’t answered my last question which was: how does Google OpenID compete with Facebook? Well it’s in an abstract sort of way. When you go to register for a site, you are only going to register with one account. Soon enough, you will be able to select from a number of sites that you specify as the center of your identity. As pictured in the image to the left, this is how a theoretical registration form would look.

No longer will you have to enter all your information into fields, instead, that information will come from your identity provider. OpenID is supposed to tie your identity back to a URL but Google has implemented their own version in typical Google style. The point being here is not to debate Google’s implementation of OpenID though, instead to illustrate that your identity can be tied to external accounts.

We’re In it For the Long Haul

In November of last year, I wrote that the email would become the center of social networks. One year later we are seeing this happen as Google and Yahoo! implement new services for the open web. Yesterday Yahoo! announced their open platform which includes a single sign on-like feature and today Google has announced their own version of OpenID support.

This is just the beginning though and ultimately, much of this will require user adoption. I’m guessing that there will soon be a registration “widget” similar to the way that Disqus handles my comments, another party will handle my registrations. As long has I get to have my own database filled with user data, that’s all that matters.

It’s going to take some time but I’d imagine in the next 12 months there will be a huge shift toward a centralized registration system that everybody can use and developers can quickly implement. It’s exciting to see the big players getting involved and while each step can be criticized for its imperfect implementation, I’d assert that this is once again a big step in the right direction.

This morning Corvida at Read/Write/Web wrote about one of those profile aggregators that rather than trying to be the destination serves as a control panel for users. It makes a lot sense in theory except for one problem: this is what Facebook Connect, MySpace Data Availability and Google Friend Connect are trying to accomplish.

The Battle for Our Identities vs Center of Communication

While the few hundred thousand people reading Read/Write/Web, Techcrunch and similar sites will now know about this service (and a small portion will end up using it), the mainstream user will never know about this site. I don’t want to be the pessimist but I think when it comes to the center of identity, the large social networks and potentially the large email providers (GMail, AOL, Yahoo, etc) will become the center of our identities.

In addition the battle for our identities is another battle taking place: the center for our communication. Currently the most likely winners for the center of our communication are the same people winning the battle for our center of identity. There are some new players though as a new form of communication has become ubiquitous: status updates. Suddenly a large group of users are communicating via short-form messages via profile statuses and “micro-blogging” tools.

Statuses have been around for a long time but only recently did we begin to think of those status updates as a two-way conversation. The current platforms winning in this space are Twitter, Facebook statuses (with commenting) and FriendFeed. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) also has status updates but for now it’s still not a two-way communication. That’s because most people sent instant messages as a follow-up to a status on AIM.

As statuses have become available across a number of platforms we are seeing the launch of status pinging tools such as Ping.fm. While all of these tools are great for communication, it still begs the question: how are these companies going to make money?

Are These Businesses?

So Twitter, FriendFeed, Ping.fm, Atomkeep (the tool covered by Corvida this morning) are all useful tools but how on earth are these going to make money? Many of the companies (such as Twitter), will say that they don’t need to make money, they just need to build critical mass and then figure it out. That makes a lot of sense but what happens when Facebook and MySpace adapt and create what is nothing more than a feature change?

On the web, trying to analyze any company’s business model is a relatively mundane task because for the most part there is no model aside from advertising. So why don’t these sites just slap up some ads and start making money? Honestly, I have no idea! Whether or not their future could be doomed by changes that Facebook and MySpace make, they should try to make money while they have the traffic.

Do you think that these companies can generate legitimate business models? Do you think their existence lays in the hands of Facebook and MySpace?

While Arrington doesn’t have details on MySpace’s implementation of the OpenID standard, I can guarantee you that most users will have absolutely no idea what it is. Mike Arrington suggests that there is a land grab to become the top OpenID issuer. I think that this is only partially true since by the time this all plays out, many users are going to have more than one OpenID issued. This ends up producing a similar problem to those people with multiple email addresses.

This is the biggest OpenID news since Yahoo announced that they would be supporting OpenID back in January. At this point it continues to be more buzz than anything else but eventually all of the support for OpenID will contribute to a more open web.

Unfortunately, I think we are still far away because none of the providers currently enable third-party OpenIDs to log on to their sites. This is a substantial barrier to an open web but at least they are making the initial steps. Hopefully we will soon see these companies open further.

It’s great that the Ma.gnolia team has made the switch but I wonder why they decided to support all the login methods that they do. For instance, what is the value of using that someone is Facebook user 91232352 but not knowing their email address? Currently Facebook doesn’t release email information whereas with OpenID, the email address is released during the registration process.

I have a feeling that we are going to see an increasing trend of login standardization but don’t expect all of the big players to adopt the standards anytime soon. While Yahoo! has accepted OpenID as a standard for logging in, not all of the other players like Facebook have accepted this format. Ma.gnolia is making a statement with this decision to support OpenID and I applaud it.

With improved usability, enhanced support for multiple languages, tighter security and faster load times, the open source content management platform is poised to grow to new heights.Developed by hundreds of developers over the course of a year, the free software has also gone to the OpenID authentication system. Already used by large institutions such as Warner Brothers Records, The New York Observer, Fast Company, Popular Science – the list is surely to grow with this latest release.

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Read more at the Drupal Website.

Licensed under the GNU General Public License, Drupal can be downloaded here.

“The core idea behind Drupal is go give everyone the power to create compelling community-driven web sites without sacrificing power,” said Dries Buytaert, Drupal project lead and chief technology officer of Acquia, Inc. “Drupal 6 is true to this heritage, offering the best-ever performance, functional power, and polish. I can’t wait to see what the global Drupal community does with it.”

Since 2001, Drupal has served as a testbed for emerging social technologies. We’d love to hear for Drupla users out there on what you like (or dislike) about the latest installment.