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.

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! :-)

I got to meet John at IIW2006b and he lived up to his reputation; honest, sharp and well-spoken. Yes, OpenID isn’t perfect yet, but its got a lot of the right components to help get it closer to what is needed. To see John making a post like the above is a good sign that AOL is starting to think about this. Hopefully folks like John can make it happen.

The big players have much more to consider than the technology when it comes to adopting OpenID. They have to consider the business aspects as well. What’s the business case for OpenID-enabling their sites? Also, a lot of the bigger sites have much of their valuation tied to “owning” large user bases. So why/how could it make sense for one of the big players to adopt OpenID?

1. Adopting a standard is always a good thing: OpenID isn’t recognized as a “real” standard yet but its quickly becoming the de-facto standard due to the wide-adoption we’re seeing as well as the convergence that has happened in the last couple of months. Having XRI/i-name support, having Sxip join the OpenID community, etc. We’re really seeing this thing take off and its never been a question of technology. Its always been momentum and timing. We have lots of momentum now and the timing couldn’t be better.
2. Data is the new software: People may laugh at me on this, but its not the software. Software is effectively free now. Content management systems, wikis, blogs and even operating systems are commodities now. Its what you do with the software that is interesting. Its the sets of data that you can create and correlate together that are really, really interesting. Just look at Google. They arguably use more open source (aka free software) than anybody around. Its how they hook that software together and correlate the data from their users that’s the interesting stuff. Now, when you have lots of data, identifying who did what becomes the key. We haven’t had a thin layer of identity to do this in the past. OpenID gives us that layer of identity and more importantly a way for users and sites to correlate and better represent data that the users are creating.
3. Data + Identity == Good Stuff: As per my last item, data coupled to identity is really interesting. What’s even more interesting than that are the things you can do with identity and data coupled together. Now that I am this one identity for all of the places that I’m going on the Internet, I can really start to provide some services for that OpenID that I couldn’t before. Attributes, reputation, trust and social networking are some of the interesting areas to look at when it comes to OpenID in 2007
4. Users can try on lots of different services much easier: Since the barrier to using different services is much lower (no login screen) users can try on lots of different services very quickly. Not only that, users can engage so much more quickly. No more trying to remember your login and password. Show up. Enter your OpenID. Engage.
5. Easier to integrate acquisitions: This isn’t that big of a deal but as the larger properties buy up sites that are OpenID-enabled they automagically can use all of their other properties. In addition, you don’t have the problems with user bases that feel they are losing their identity because of integration with one of the big players. They can keep their same identity that they created on the site even if its acquired.

That’s all I’ve got for a chilly Sunday morning in December. Glad you’re looking at OpenID John and let us know if there is anything we can do to help.

Now this is pretty cool. Imagine if you hooked in some free OpenID mojo to this. You could have your own custom domain that would be automagically OpenID enabled. This could be huge for AOL if they decide to look seriously at OpenID … the time is now!!

Very exciting news but probably not so good if you’re a registrar.