Low Carb Identity Matters

People have been asking me over the last couple of weeks what it is exactly that I’m working on (not the least of which are my parents). When I first was introduced to the identity space I talked about it on my blog and with people all over the place. Invariably, I have people ask me, “So why OpenID?”

In December of 2005 I happened upon OpenID and I was intrigued. Brad’s specification and the information he put up at openid.net were minimal at best. For me, that really rang true. Fewer assumptions?! Easy to implement?! 10 page specification?! C’mon! Identity is supposed to be complicated. There are too many nuances, problems, etc to deal with it in 10 pages. But the fact remains when you don’t have ubiquity; less is more.

What always has interested me about OpenID was that within only a few minutes you could get up and running and using it. There are some great libraries (shameless plug) as well as a growing user base. It really is a decentralized, it really does allow users to take control of their identities.

Is OpenID the best technology? Not yet. However, some of the best technologists I’ve ever met are working on it. That gives OpenID something that a lot of technologies haven’t had before them; collaborative momentum. The people involved with OpenID realize that a) we have to have something that is defacto and b) we don’t really know how users are going to use this stuff. We’ve realized that we don’t need a Sony Betamax, we need VHS.

Alright, so what do I mean by we have to have something that is defacto? Over the past 10+ years there have been a lot of really smart people trying to solve the problem of distributed/user-centric/federated identity. Literally thousands upon thousands of hours have gone into developing specifications, use cases and actual code but today we still don’t have any sort of standard. So. Maybe we should try a different way. Something organic. Something that is incremental that actually watches how the users use the technology and adapts from there. Hence b) … figure out how users are going to use this stuff. Then repeat.

Think about the concept of truly horizontal identity. Really take a moment and think about how disruptive a technology like this will be. Add to that the fact that its decentralized and user driven. The technology is going to adapt and mature based on where the users go. Developers will innovate on top of the OpenID platform (another benefit of its simplicity) and users will find and use the best apps. Then again, we’ll repeat.

So, b). Imagine going back to 1985 and trying explain eBay. You can’t do it. “First, there’s going to be this thing called the Internet.” Heh. I honestly believe that the ability for users to maintain their own identities that are horizontal (not multiple instances of themselves in vertical silos) to the web will be hugely disruptive moving forward and will result in a major win for end users.

But first, there will be this thing called OpenID …