I’ve been thinking about issues around user profile, data accessibility (because who wants to “port”), and universal login thelast couple of days as I prepare for a panel discussion about reputation at next week’s Community 2.0 conference.

Specifically, I wanted to check in on the state of OpenID support around the social web. It seems there are glimmers of hope out there. Large companies like Yahoo and Microsoft have announced plans to support OpenID in various ways. That’s part of the problem: lot’s of talk, not much action.

From the TechCrunch artcile “Kevin Rose at FOWA: DIGG Adopts OpenID”

Kevin Rose, speaking here at the Future of Web Apps conference in London, just announced that Digg will adopt the OpenID decentralized digital identity platform. Don’t expect this right away though – adoption will begin “later this year” according to Rose.

That was FOWA 2007… as in February of 2007 (over 18 months ago). Unfortunately, it seems like OpenID gets more lip service than it does development resources for most sites.

AOL received kudos for their OpenID implementation, yet you still can’t login in to AOL using an OpenID created by a “3rd Party” (read: not AOL.)

From AOL’s login help file.

Can I log in to all AOL sites using my OpenID account?
We have additional work to do to support 3rd Party OpenIDs with the ability to log in and access AOL® Web properties. Once this work is done, you will be able to log in using your 3rd Party OpenID instead of creating an AOL® account. If a property is able to support OpenID you should see a tab with the OpenID logo as a log in option.

Isn’t one of the key tenats of OpenID not to have a central authority managing IDs, so, more often than not you will be dealing with “3rd party generated IDs”.

I don’t claim to be an identity or data portability expert, but it seems there is work to be done both on the advocacy & user education side of OpenID, as well as on the implementation side.

On the positive side, there are several sites that fully support OpenID, and they can be found here:
https://www.myopenid.com/directory

Hello folks. I’m Andrew Cohen, a Project Director at Forum One Communications and a colleague of Bill Johnston, the dungeon master of this fine site.

I’ll be contributing to this blog from time to time, bringing perspectives from the world of government, foundations, organizations, and (ahem) the east coast. I’ve been working with nonprofit organizations for about ten years and more increasingly providing guidance for organizations struggling use Facebook, MySpace and similar as well as set up and run their own communities.

I’m based in the Alexandria office of Forum One where I reside with my wife, two children (ages 6 and 2), and — despite a steady stream of requests — no pets yet.

I’ve met a few regular readers of this blog in New York City at the Online Communities Unconference East last February and the "Marketing and Online Communities" events last fall November 2007. I also run my own series of nonprofit-focused events called Web Executive Seminars at the National Press Club in Washington DC. I also contribute to Forum One’s strategy blog "Influence."

That’s more than enough about me. See you here again soon!

Community Managers are in short supply

Community Strategist is an emerging role

The senior manager or director in charge of community is undefined

We post jobs here.

Looking to fill a role, or help define a senior role?

The sixth Online Community Summit was held last Thursday and Friday, October 4th and 5th in Sonoma, CA.

Format is unusual

Setting is really fantastic

Conversations spill out into

Joi Podgorny – http://joipodgorny.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/day-2-ocs-2007-notes/

Josh Ledgard’s Blog – http://ledgards.com/blogs/josh/archive/2007/10/05/ocs-2007-now-what.aspx

Dr Fuzzy – http://drfuzzy.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/online-community-summit-2007/

Several companies and workgroups are working on data porting, data (network and profile) sharing and standards. One of the more interesting development on the social side of the issue was the publishing of the “Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web” last week. The Bill of Rights asserts that users of the social web have certain rights, including:

Ownership of their own personal information, including:
- their own profile data
- the list of people they are connected to
- the activity stream of content they create;
Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and
Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.

Sites supporting these rights shall:
- Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list, and the data that’s shared with them via the service, using a persistent URL or API token and open data formats;
- Allow their users to syndicate their own stream of activity outside the site;
- Allow their users to link from their profile pages to external identifiers in a public way; and
- Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on their site, using the same external identifiers made available for lookup within the service.

The Marketing & Online Communities continues to come together.

I’m pleased that I’ve been able to secure two of the people that I am paying attention to with regard to “marketing / pr 2.0″ practices:

Andy Chambers – DigitLondon
Dave Bottoms – Yahoo
Marcien Jenkles – AOL

Betsy Burroughs – FutureCatalyst

Tim Manners – Cool News of the Day / Reveries
Steve Rubel – Micro Persuasion / Edelman

Thanks for taking the survey!

Please feel free to check back on the Online Community Report for Unconference notes, presentations and updates.

Next research project will be on marketing to / with online communities.

How communities influence brand perception at large?
What are appropriate techniques for engaging community members with marketing messages?
How do you balance your message with the needs and interests of a particular community?
How do you identify influencers?
How do you highlight influencer activity?

The GigaOM blog gives a great analysis of a recent Gartner press release…

First Law: Virtual worlds are not games, but neither are they a parallel universe (yet). The initial reaction of many business leaders when faced with virtual worlds is to dismiss them as a mere “game” of no benefit to the enterprise and something to be banned for wasting compute resources and time. Many of those that see beyond the gaming elements immediately veer toward questions such as “How do we exploit this as a sales channel?” This reaction is equally incorrect and potentially even more damaging to the enterprise. “Growth in virtual worlds is significant but lower than it appears; the overall population of non-game virtual worlds is still small compared to massively multi-user online games (MMOGs) and the totality of community-oriented and niche-targeted environments,” Mr. Prentice said.

Second Law: Behind every avatar is a real person. Gartner said people can’t be fooled by the fantasy elements in the virtual world. There are unwritten rules and expectations for behavior and culture are developing. Enterprise users must consider their corporate reputations.

Third Law: Be relevant and add value. Many commercial companies have established a virtual world presence, but none have converted it into an effective, profitable sales channel. There has been criticism of early corporate entries into the virtual world, Second Life, related to the showrooms usually being empty and lacking atmosphere. While there have been a limited number of individuals who have earned more than $5,000 per year from their virtual world businesses, most corporations will see minimal revenue gains in the market at this time. “Do not expect to undertake profitable commercial activities inside most virtual worlds in the next three years,” Mr. Prentice said.

Fourth Law: Understand and contain the downside. Enterprises face serious questions, such as “Could activities in the virtual world undermine or influence my organization/brand in the real world?” With significant portions of the virtual economy based on adult oriented activities, questions of appropriate behavior and ethics also arrive. In-world behavior can be a problem in public areas; annoying interruptions can range from unintentional arrivals and erratic behavior from new residents whose avatar control is still suspect to misdemeanors such as graffiti, to more-concerted protest activities designed to disrupt.

Fifth Law: This is a long haul. Today’s multiplicity of virtual environments has developed through the convergence of social networking, simulation and online gaming. There are many new entrants, whose stability and scalability are not yet established. There is significant probability that, over time, market pressures will lead to a merging of current virtual worlds into a smaller number of open-sourced environments that support the free transfer of assets and avatars from one to another with the use of a single, universal client.

To arrive at that figure, Prentice considered numerous variables, chief among them these five:

* Upward growth rates of existing worlds and social networks like MySpace.
* Usage patterns of current online world users (“Especially in the teen and young adult area…”)
* General computer game usage (Gartner cites a recent Entertainment Software Association report indicating that 69% of US head of households already play computer games.)
* Penetration and growth of Internet-enabled notebooks in this generation and spread of easily accessible wireless Internet.
* Involvement by major firms like IBM in virtual worlds, coupled to metaverse consulting groups to serve them there. (“[T]his reflects both a growing interest from their client base, and will result in growing pressures (and competencies) to accelerate the move by corporate users into the virtual worlds space.”)

To start a social network today you need only flip the switch. Ning, KickApps, Pligg, GoingOn, are all players in the ever growing space of social network providers. I see the rapid commodification of social networks having two major impacts:

1. Social Networks are Features

Om Malik got it right when he said social networks are features, not properties. Friends lists, collaborative ranking, private messaging, public commenting, widgetable profile pages – this collection features strengthens any site.

2. Unified Identity Becomes Essential

The proliferation of social networks as a site feature means a proliferation of personal profiles, which makes identity management more and more of an issue for Joe User. He wants to participate in the social network features of the sites he visits, but managing multiple identities is a pain.

So, if you’re considering the addition of social networking features to your site (and you should be), you should also be looking at the new identity standards and tools to help your users manage their own profile identities – and the one with the most momentum right now is OpenID.