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AOL supporting OpenID

February 15, 2007 in AOL, Identity, JanRain, OpenID by kveton

This from the I’m-the-last-one-to-report department … :-)

John Panzer of AOL announced this morning that AOL is now supporting OpenID for all of their users. This means if you have an AOL account/screenname you can now use it as an OpenID. From the article:

  • Every AOL/AIM user now has at least one OpenID URI, http://openid.aol.com/screenname.
  • This experimental OpenID 1.1 Provider service is available now and we are conducting compatibility tests.
  • We’re working with OpenID relying parties to resolve compatibility issues.
  • Our blogging platform has enabled basic OpenID 1.1 in beta, so every beta blog URI is also a basic OpenID identifier. (No Yadis yet.)
  • We don’t yet accept OpenID identities within our products as a relying party, but we’re actively working on it. That roll-out is likely to be gradual.
  • We are tracking the OpenID 2.0 standardization effort and plan to support it after it becomes final.

Great work John and the rest of the AOL gang! This is fantastic news and I know the OpenID community couldn’t be more excited!

Now, all you AOL users, head over to Jyte and start making some claims! :-)

About

This is the blog of Scott Kveton, digital identity promoter, open source contributor, avid gardener, passionate pizza maker, loving husband and proud father. Read More ...

Also Known As

Once or twice in my life people have mis-spelled my name (I know, its a shocker) ... you may have seen my lastname appear as any or all of the following:

Kverton • Kvelton • Keaton
Rueton • Kreton • Kventon
Kevton • Kevin • Smith (true story)
Kueton• Kvetan• Keveton


    12 comments

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    February 15, 2007 at 6:15 pm

    JustaDog

    Wow - you opened my eyes. I really didn’t think there was any gullible people that still subscribed to AOL.

    (I never did of course).

    Amazing.

    February 15, 2007 at 6:21 pm

    Anonymous

    I tried earlier to use my AOL OpenID to authenticate to Jyte. It failed

    February 15, 2007 at 7:44 pm

    cshields

    So, just a suggestion.. There should be a simple page setup somewhere that collects all of these massive userbase-turned-providers. This way, openid enabled sites can point to it for potential users who may not know they already have an openid. I just threw a quick one liner into the drupal openid module for one of our sites that says “You may already have an OpenID. AOL/AIM users use http://openid.aol.com/screenname” but this list is likely to grow and be dynamic. Just linking to such a list would be better.

    Cheers!

    February 15, 2007 at 10:34 pm

    Dmitry Shechtman

    Well, it certainly looks like one of your predictions for 2007 was correct!

    February 15, 2007 at 11:27 pm

    kveton

    Heh … and its only February!! I should have thought up crazier predictions!! :-)

    February 16, 2007 at 6:33 am

    Jason Harris techcraver.com

    Out of curiosity - what’s the pros/cons to the big boys (AOL/google, yahoo?) perhaps stepping in to offer openids, from your viewpoint?

    February 16, 2007 at 6:44 am

    kveton

    Pros: ability to interact with even bigger eco-system of users than before. Ideally you’d never have to register for another site again. Any site (big or small) would like this.

    Cons: increased liability for delivering identity for their users to other sites. How can they trust those sites? Lack of “control” of users is another one. I think most sites are realizing however that they don’t “own” users, they build a relationship and continue to build better and better services for those users.

    February 25, 2007 at 10:25 pm

    djm62.freeshell.org

    Well, anything that will give millions of people OpenIDs without /any/ effort from them has to be good.

    Note: This post is over a year and a half old. You may want to check later in this blog to see if there is new information relevant to your comment.