I’m proud to announce that, as of this morning, we are going to be taking ClaimID in a slightly new direction. We’re going to be concentrating our efforts on being an OpenID provider, one that is extremely simple and easy to use. We realize that in the next few months lots of people are going to start paying attention to OpenID, and we hope that we can contribute to the success of OpenID. I’ve written more over at the ClaimID blog, and Terrell has shared his opinion here.
As I’ve said many times before, ClaimID is somewhat of an ongoing research project. We’ve listened to our users, watched the marketplace, and tried to stay ahead of the curve in making identity easy for the rest of us. We see big convergence coming with OpenID, so it just makes sense for us to narrow our focus on making OpenID understandable and easy to use. We’re very excited about this transition, and we’re grateful for the tens of thousands of people who have already joined ClaimID.
This needn’t be said, but of course ClaimID will remain free, and we won’t be changing the product drastically. You’ll see some new documentation, a new about page, and some new features that make it super easy for you to make your blog or website an OpenID. We look forward to what 2007 holds for OpenID, and we’re glad we could be part of this great movement.
Fred Stutzman is a doctoral student, researcher and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science. He studies how people use social media.
