30,000 OpenID users on 37 signals apps
April 29th, 2008
If you’re thinking about whether or not to support OpenID in your new Rails app, consider this tweet from DHH
Around 30K accounts on 37s apps are using OpenID. That’s a nice chunk!
Even if that just a few percent of the whole, 30K is a huge amount of users. And if these people are like me, OpenID support makes me much more likely to create an account somewhere. If a see a site that looks kinda cool, but I need to login to start using it, and it has a 5-10 field registration form, I usually skip it. Now if I see the same site with OpenID support, I simply enter OpenID and bypass the extended registration fields making me far more likely to signup and try it out.
If you want a chunk of that 30K, maybe you should add OpenID to your authentication as well.
While I’m on the subject, 37 signals does a cool thing if you log into their apps with OpenID. I currently have account at 3 different basecamps. I have my own basecamp, a basecamp for my primary day job, and a basecamp with another project I am helping out on. Since I login with OpenID on all three, they give me a little drop down near the top that lets me switch between basecamps. Remember that basecamp account are unique per basecamp instance. So the only way it can link my account together like that is to use my OpenID.
- Why can’t you provide this by looking for the same username? Well, since your account is specific to a basecamp instance, you can’t always have the same username in multiple basecamps.
- Why can’t you use an email, that’s globally unique right? Indeed, but I use more than 1 email address. While each email is unique, I dont have just one that means “me”. Plus in order to verify the email you have to do a messy email validation step, that noone likes doing.
- OpenID is globally unique no matter what. People usually have just one that they use. And verification is done by an identity broker rather than an email.
It all adds up to a big frickin’ win to me. This has bigger implications for me, though. What if you logged into a site, and simply by creating an account it could go out and get publicly available information about you and mash it up. Say, your favorite bands from Last.FM, the latest comments on your blog, your most recent twitter tweet. And it would be able to do all this with zero configuration because the OpenID you used on this site is the same that you used on other sites. Single Sign On is a big deal, but this is the real reason OpenID is awesome to me.
The past web was founded on the principal of anonymity, but the future of the web is grounded in absolute identity.
June 23rd, 2008 at 04:33 PM <quote>The past web was founded on the principal of anonymity, but the future of the web is grounded in absolute identity.</quote>
It seem probable that the author of this line is too young to know what a real fascist, or a real McCarthyite could do with such information as his or her musical preferences, political thoughts/blog posts, and list of friends/fellow travellers. It seems, indeed, that the past is prologue if only because it’s narrative languishes unread.
Good luck with your bright and shiny and very convenient future!
June 27th, 2008 at 04:31 PM
That is a compelling privacy issue, but like all technology, I think it takes a certain level of social responsibility to wield them properly.
So, hopefully, I will never be called a communist because I like my music loud and rockin’.
Time will tell. There may be some bumps in the road as we feel this stuff out. But ultimately, the road will smooth. At the end of the day, I firmly believe that identity will replace anonymity for the most part.
Lastly, remember that noone is stopping you from have unique personas. joe.openid.com is your corporate identity, while punkrocker.openid.com can be your drug doing, gothic underground msuic going identity.