EnThinnai Blog

Last week we learnt that UK based newspaper Telegraph will provide OpenID to its users. When Yahoo announced only a few days earlier, there was a general euphoria. But this time around the reaction has been lukewarm. Johannes Ernst’s reaction is noteworthy. Given the general perception that first movers will gain strategic advantage, he feels that during 2008 we will see many more joining the growing ranks of OpenID providers. He goes on to say:

It also points to the adoption dynamic for relying parties: companies that believe to be the “gorilla” in their respective markets will push their business partners to accept OpenIDs from them, and preferably only from them. That will look like many closed federations for some time, but it’s inevitable that those will get opened — relying parties will see to that. This OpenID provider rush, and the push into closely affiliated relying parties, are going to be the primary business dynamics for OpenID for the next 18 months or so, in my view.

This is interesting because I am of the opinion that from the beginning the Relying Parties are in the driver’s seat as they get to decide which OpenID providers they will accept. That is why I am expecting OpenID providers to come up with some differentiating features. For example, Vidoop offers a revenue sharing plan for the relying parties. OpenIDs provided by Sun assures the relying parties that they are dealing with Sun employees. As I suggested in the previous post, schools can issue OpenIDs to its students. OpenID becomes useful if the OpenID providers mediate and help the Relying Parties to overcome the Internet dog problem.