Something I love is OpenID. I love having a portable online identity, not being tied to an email provider or something like Facebook Connect or Twitter OAuth. Better yet, I don’t have to rely on someone else keeping their servers up – I can change my OpenID provider whenever I like and keep the same log-in (how?).

Why is OpenID not more popular then, when it is probably a safer and more reliable option? It might take a bit more work (registering with a service provider and then linking to this in the header of the HTML of the user’s webpage), but it isn’t exactly a huge amount of work. I don’t know how difficult it is to implement an OpenID log-in properly; dozens of plug-ins exist for many pieces systems like WordPress (I removed it here due to issues getting the log-in styled properly… not really a technically limitation!).

Why are more and more systems embracing proprietary log-in systems like OAUTH or Facebook Connect, but neglecting to include an OpenID log-in? Many sites, like AOL, are OpenID providers but then fail to accept OpenID themselves. It’s perfectly good having hundreds of providers, but little use if the major sites which provide these identities actually refuse to then accept them!

OpenID should be pursued, whether instead of or in addition to services like Facebook Connect and OAUTH. Better yet would be for Facebook and Twitter to accept and offer OpenIDs, of course!