Online Community Report - Comments

Chris Ainsworth: OpenID: What will it take to make it mainstream?

nospam@example.com (Chris Ainsworth) — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:08:50 -0400

It's more of a slow creep than a flurry, but OpenID is getting out there. I use mine where I can (currently, only a few places, the most prominent being 37signals, where it's especially helpful for tying multiple accounts together).

We can also help further along adoption by supporting OpenID logins with our own sites. After reading your post, I looked into options for my own wordpress blog, and there are already several plugins available allowing readers to manage accounts and comment using their OpenID. I'm gonna try implementing something this week.

The support is out there for other blogging tools and services as well.

Scott Mace: OpenID: What will it take to make it mainstream?

nospam@example.com (Scott Mace) — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:20:16 -0400

I've had several failures using my TypePad-generated OpenID to log into other OpenID sites. We need to solve problems like these first.

Itay Banner: OpenID: What will it take to make it mainstream?

nospam@example.com (Itay Banner) — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:50:07 -0400

Funny you mention 37Signals. I was using two of their services (Highrise and Basecamp) and tried to switch to login by OpenID. I set up an OpenID on my Flickr account (Via Yahoo!), but alas - Basecamp wouldn't acknowledge it. This is how I came to be aware of different generations in OpenID - 37Signals service rep said something about BC not supporting OpenID 2.0, whatever that is.

Talk about OpenID implementation.

bill Johnston: OpenID: What will it take to make it mainstream?

nospam@example.com (bill Johnston) — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:28:14 -0400

Brian - thanks much for the thoughtful and informative reply. idselector is very cool.

Kevin Fox: OpenID: What will it take to make it mainstream?

nospam@example.com (Kevin Fox) — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:07:57 -0400

Nice post Bill. Chris Messina generated a good list of sites (http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2008/02/15/an-update-to-my-my-openid-shitlist-hitlist-and-wishlist) that have promised OpenID support and have not delivered, ones who have delivered and ones who should.

I think it will come down to users demanding OpenID in order to force the hand of all the sites that are currently content to sit on the fence. There are lots of cool new technologies out there like DiSo that will make it harder and harder to merely play lip service to being open.

Brian Kissel: OpenID: What will it take to make it mainstream?

nospam@example.com (Brian Kissel) — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:23:29 -0400

At present there are nearly 14,000 OpenID enabled websites (http://janrain.com/blog/2008/05/). Most are user generated content sites - wikis, blogs, discussion groups, social networks, etc. Further, there are nearly 400 million OpenID enabled users, although many of these are not active or may not even know that they have an OpenID since they were passively provisioned by providers such as AOL and Yahoo.

We are starting to see OpenID expand into additional mainstream applications such as media (CNN Political Market), group productivity applications (37 Signals), and business networking (Plaxo).

What is required for the acceleration of OpenID adoption is easier deployment models for website operators and more intuitive end user tools. One example of this is a recently released OpenID login widget, ID Selector (wwww.idselector.com).

The OpenID Foundation and the companies supporting OpenID (Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Google, IBM, BBC, Verisign, JanRain, France Telecom, etc.) also continue to promote adoption of OpenID while enhancing the associated products and services.

As the dialog continues, we'll learn more about when and where OpenID-based solutions can address market needs.

MDF Williams: Liveblogging and the back channel move to Twitter

nospam@example.com (MDF Williams) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:00:13 -0400

It was most difficult to pay attention to all three: the main speaker, the twitter feed and the IRC backchannel.

I agree with Dave that the two backchannels had different tones. The twitter feed (and twitter in general) always feels like a bunch of people hiring skywriters to put their comments up. It's yelling out into a room hoping someone will yell back. The IRC backchannel was more like a second conversation - more realtime and engaged than twitter.

Twitter == live documentation;
IRC == complementary data

I'll also mention that at least part of the time joi was in the IRC backchannel and watching the tweet feed. He could ask questions to clarify the tweets. Certainly an interesting convergence of technologies.

Dave Witzel: Liveblogging and the back channel move to Twitter

nospam@example.com (Dave Witzel) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:36:17 -0400

I agree that twitter became a main source of documentation for the conference. There was an IRC channel as well though a pretty small group followed. Interesting that the IRC channel had a couple of differences. One, a lot more discussion of technical problems (how do I change my login and "damn I got droppod" again.) I suspect the group was small in part because people didn't know how to join. On the other hand, their was more "conversation". It is nice to be able to use more that 140 chars. and respond directly to what people have. I think one of the things that suffered from twittering was blogging. I don't know of anyone who live blogged....

Silona: Mobile Communities Unconference: This Thursday, still seats available!

nospam@example.com (Silona) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:13:33 -0400

hey next time please crosspost this to upcoming.org?

thanks it is the easiest place for me to keep up with events like this.

Aaron Strout: Online Community Unconfernece East: A report back

nospam@example.com (Aaron Strout) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:25:40 -0500

Bill - great write up. Thanks again for putting on yet another great event. I learned a lot while I was there, met some new friends and came back with several fresh ideas on how to make our We Are Smarter community better.

By the way, who's the fat guy with sideburns in the maroon shirt in the picture above?

Aaron (@astrout)

Bill: How to Develop a Community Strategy

nospam@example.com (Bill) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:17:23 -0500

Great post, I enjoyed reading it. By the way, your posts are extremely informative!

Tommy: Advertising and Social Media

nospam@example.com (Tommy) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:01:34 -0500

Great post. 1000% agree. Advertising now needs to include a learning or some other value add to attract clicks. Flash banners aren't enough.

Tony T: Advertising and Social Media

nospam@example.com (Tony T) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:07:59 -0500

I think social ads are very hard to implement well without being too intrusive (a lesson fb learned with beacon). Time will only tell until a better ad model comes out.

Dream: Hiring a Community Manager

nospam@example.com (Dream) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:13:37 -0500

I'm working in Community Website in Bangkok and really like to visit this site. So i just wanna say Hi and thanks for the nice article.

Igor Pečovnik: Facebook & Google join DataPortability Workgroup: What does it mean to you?

nospam@example.com (Igor Pečovnik) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:44:32 -0500

I belive that this is just another WEB 2.0 approach - our social network portability is on my opinion logical way and I in the future we will develop "personal social network exchange" as a standard.

Regards,
Igor