During the last years I was really impressed what happened with the internet. Maybe you don’t share my view but I got the impression that content is becoming richer. On the other hand the curators of these rich websites want to “own” the user by simply knowing him or her and ask new users to register.
There is nothing to complain about but there is no common sense on the internet about password complexity and you sometimes see really strange password rules for very simple content.
What happens? You register and you try to harmonize your passwords across different platforms. In the end you are not successful and have a couple of different login credentials you cannot remember at all. One day I counted my login credentials I have to login to different websites (Facebook, twitter, linked in, yahoo, google, banking, asalavista.net and so on). I stopped counting when I reached 30 websites with around 2 different login credentials. I am using a password safe I have written on my own, but others are using open source or public domain software without really knowing what it does with your passwords.
I believe it is a better idea to have one public authentication provider which is widely spread and that has a big interest in safeguarding the identity of the users.
I found a good article / infographic at gigya.com showing the market reach of Facebook, twitter, linkedin, yahoo and google.
It was no surprise to me that Facebook seems to have most of the users – and websites. But it was a surprised that Facebook already covers 37% of the business websites seem to use Facebook connect. I started to review most of the websites I am using and found that most of them already have a facebook connect button and some are offering multiple login buttons (Facebook and twitter or Facebook and linkedin).
Think about the idea that you only login once into your Facebook account and the rest of the websites you use can use this authentication to identify you properly. I like that idea very much because it would help me to use one single and very complex password instead of dozensof passwords which are not that complex.
Some people might now say that it is not a good idea to use Facebook because they are considered to misbehave in terms of privacy and I fully agree with this. But for using Facebook as identity provider you do not need to tell them everything about yourself. You do not need to share pictures, do not need to press the like it button or need to connect to other people or use Facebook apps.
In the end I believe that there is hardly any other social website than Facebook that has this interest in maintaining the integrity of your digital identity. There is one simple reason: If they don’t know you, your profile has no value. The value of the entire Facebook profiles reflect the value of the Facebook brand. Remember Facebook’s IPO and you will understand what I mean.
Think about it! Mabe you’ll like the idea!
Joerg Asma 