OpenID for the Rest of the World

Through the history of the Internet, there are inflection points where a new technology hits “the masses” and really takes off. Almost universally, the common thread in a quick expansion and adoption of a technology is a major breakthrough—not of pure technology—but a breakthrough in design. Specifically, a major breakthrough in ease of use.

Before Google created a dead simple search interface, the vast majority of people used browsing as their primary method of navigating the Web. Before Mosaic made visual browsing simple, text-based navigation through Archie and Veronica were the norm. Apple made consuming music online easy with iTunes and the iPod. AOL made “getting online” easy for Mom and Dad. Most recently, YouTube has made Internet video sharing easy for every high schooler in the world.

The history of the Internet is littered with technologies that were fabulous, but never quite made it mainstream. At Mixx, we’re so in love with the idea of OpenID that we want to do our part to make sure OpenID isn’t relegated to the history books in the “might have been” chapter.

For those new to OpenID, the idea is simple. After creating an account with an OpenID provider, you are given a unique identifier (a custom URL) that you in turn use to log in to and register with sites that support OpenID (”consumers,” as they call them). The goal of OpenID is two-fold. First, you, dear user, can create your OpenID with an account provider you trust and, in turn, extend that trust to sites and services of your choosing. No longer do you need to hand over an email address and a password to every new (potentially fly-by-night) web application that comes along. Second, since you typically have a single OpenID, you won’t have to try and remember which username and password you used on this site or that site. You simply remember that you used OpenID!

OpenID, since it’s creation, has made great inroads across the web. Some of the largest service providers out there (AOL, Yahoo!, etc.) have become OpenID providers, giving OpenIDs to millions and millions of people. Every week, at least one site launches with OpenID support or an existing site adds OpenID functionality to their login or registration process. The trouble, as we’ve observed, is that while OpenID login and registration is being rapidly added to sites, its presentation lacks the design necessary for Mom and Dad to grasp OpenID’s power.

Today, we’re proud to launch our take on OpenID registration and login. If you swing by the Login or Registration pages and you’ll see something new. For existing Mixxers, the login screen will be contextual to your current method of login (either username/password or OpenID).

For new Mixxers, you can register with an AOL, Yahoo!, or Facebook account. Standard OpenID registration is also still available. If, by some twist of fate, you don’t have an account with any of the third-party services we currently support, you can still register with your email address. While Facebook isn’t OpenID per-se, both AOL and Yahoo! registration and login utilizes OpenID under the covers without asking users for their OpenID URL. In AOL’s case, we ask for your AOL or AIM account name and shuffle you off to the appropriate login page. Yahoo! login and registration is even simpler—click the big honkin’ “Login/Register with your Yahoo! ID” button and we take care of the rest.

We’ve gone one step further and added a great feature to login: we keep track of the last method of login you use and redesign the page based on that. So, if you use Facebook to login, you’ll be presented with a large Facebook icon and button. No need to hunt and click through our login options!

The last piece to the puzzle is managing your accounts. Navigate to your Account Settings and click the new “Accounts” tab. From there, you can add and remove your third-party accounts at will. By linking up your various accounts across the web with your Mixx account, you can use any of those methods to login to Mixx. This is a great first step toward the goal of interoperability between Mixx and your favorite web sites and applications.

We put a good deal of work into the new registration and login experience and we hope you find the improvements useful and, above all else, easy. As always, we appreciate your feedback and look forward to hearing what you have to say!

~ Jason (and the rest of the Mixx team)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 8:29 am and is filed under User Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.