Social networking has taken over and everybody is talking about it. The big players are MySpace, Facebook and on the professional networking end LinkedIn and Xing (former OpenBC), to only mention a few. Are you part of one, two or even more of these social networking? I am! Signing up is easy and mostly done in a few steps but creating your profile takes most of the time a little longer than only a mouse click here and there. However, help is on the way: OpenID. “OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.” Further information is also available at Wikipedia. However, a recent article in the New York Times discusses the idea of a standardized OpenID which is pushed by several companies. But why? Well, the question is pretty simple, there will be more and more social networks out there. My guess is, that not only classes, universities, schools, and professional networks will be the center of interest. More so private social networks like extended circle of friends, communities, neighborhoods, and families. So who wants to enter all the personal information over and over again? I do not and therefor pledge for an OpenID that will help me to sign up for those social networks I would like to be part of and those I have been invited to.
Interested in creating your own social network that you are in control off? Here is one of my earlier entries that describes one option on how to do so.
As a side note, this somehow reminds me a little bit of the idea and discussion about global ID and how Google is or can be a part of it. John Lanchester wrote a pretty comprehensive and interesting article about it that I enjoyed reading.
Filed under: eLearning, Social Networks, Web 2.0, internet, networking, openID, social network, Technology
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