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MySpace Joins OpenID Coalition

Posted by timothy on from the inflection-point-perhaps dept.

the4thdimension writes "MySpace has joined a coalition of other big-name e-services in support of OpenID. If you aren't familiar with the OpenID coalition, they are a group that seeks to allow users to create a single account/password set to be used on a number of services. Such services already signed up include: Google's Blogger, Wordpress, AOL, Yahoo, Vox, LiveJournal, and others." Reader gbjbaanb adds a link to the BBC's coverage and points out that MySpace's 100 million users would mean nearly a doubling of the approximately 120 million OpenID accounts now in use, writing: "Initially support is to use MySpace OpenIDs as providers only — i.e. you cannot logon to MySpace with an OpenID created elsewhere, but that policy will change in the future. This should help to make OpenID the de-facto login mechanism for the Internet, now if only Microsoft would support it, there are plenty OSS OpenID libraries available."

4 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. Defeat the purpose? by kgwilliam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Initially support is to use MySpace OpenIDs as providers only -- i.e. you cannot logon to MySpace with an OpenID created elsewhere" Ummm.... Doesn't that sortof defeat the purpose of a single username/password system? You have to create an OpenID for MySpace, and then you have to create a different OpenID for site XYZ. How many other sites are going to require that you create a new OpenID for their site?

    1. Re:Defeat the purpose? by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What I don't get about OpenID is that it seems to give my OpenID provider access to every site I log onto. As much trouble as it is having to manage hundreds of logins, I don't think the proper solution is to proxy all my logins to some third party.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    2. Re:Defeat the purpose? by Wolfger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Absolutely. This is why OpenID is going nowhere fast. Everybody wants to be a provider, but virtually nobody wants to accept OpenID credentials from other sites. LJ does, and to my surprise Identi.ca has since day one, but most "OpenID sites" are providers only. It's sad, and makes baby Stallman cry.

      --
      Nothing to see here. Move along.
  2. Blah Blah Blah... by anom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Until you actually let someone authenticate to your site using OpenID, you're not really helping anything. You're just spreading BS about how open you are when you're really just supporting further centralization around yourself. Until the big names start acting as Relying Parties, I don't wanna hear about it.