AOL expanding support of OpenID
On Monday, AOL/Netscape (yes, they are the same company) will launch consumer support for OpenID on their Netscape and My.Netscape sites.
This is great news as we’ll have another couple of great sites supporting the OpenID protocol. The only drawback is that you will actually need to create a “real” account on those sites and then associate your OpenID to the account. Logging in from there on out you can use your OpenID from where ever you get it.
This is great step forward though. These things take time and I’m very impressed with AOL’s aggressive adoption of OpenID. We need more companies to step up to the plate and do the same … *hint* *hint* … :-) I do like how they did the association; this could become the defacto standard for how people associate and link their existing accounts (like Digg, Netvibes, etc) and folding it into the one OpenID that you use everywhere. No need to start over, you can still be the great Digg user or wiki contributor as before.
Great work AOL & Netscape, hats off to you.
Total aside: 37signals has included OpenID as an optional login in its new (this week) product, Highrise.