Five Articles on OpenID you should Know

Sometimes I don’t really know how to explain OpenID to people; especially to those who either have never heard about it or don’t think it was really that cool just because it’s a single sign-on system. Of course, this is not really OpenID’s fault but rather reflects my inability to articulate myself properly and be persuasive. Certainly I’m not the best advocate of OpenID, am I?

So it’s probably best to link to five really good articles on OpenID. The authors know what they are writing about and they are a thousand times more convincing than I am.

First there is Johannes Ernst’s (NetMesh) and David Recordon’s (VeriSign) great article The case for OpenID. Both authors are key figures in the identity world. In this article they focus – among other topics – on OpenID’s decentralised nature and its lighter cost structure which should make it more appealing to entrepreneurs.

Simon Willison is really an OpenID evangelist spreading the word at various conferences and also providing thought-provoking articles on his blog. Two of them have caught my attention:

How to turn your blog in to an OpenID is describing how users can delegate their blog URL to an identity provider and thus can use it as an OpenID. Delegation is probably one of the smartest things you can do with OpenID. Descriptive and easy to understand.

In Six cool things you can build with OpenID Simon is describing some really great things like the idea of decentralised social networks, social whitelists (could be used for spam protection), and pre-approved accounts. So if you think OpenID was just working for signing-on to websites you might be surprised by this article.

Brian Oberkirch has also written a phantastic article on portable social networks and how OpenID could be an integral part of it. It’s very similar to Simon Willison’s idea of decentralised social networks. Very eleoquent and definitely worth reading.

My last recommendation is Brady Forrest’s article Pros and Cons of OpenID. The title says it all really. It’s very balanced, I think and should grab your attention.