Take this as a few bitter words from an "grumpy OpenID early adopter": * because the user experience really requires you to have the "nascar effect" of several

Take this as a few bitter words from an "grumpy OpenID early adopter": * because the user experience really requires you to have the "nascar effect" of several well-known icons. OpenID could scale horizontally technically but in fact it doesn't work that way. Except for a few providers (like Google) it is not "peer to peer" (many to many) but more like "business to customers" (one to many) relation * because the "like"-generation beloved blue button talks something else (and is "way more important" than some technical nice thing) * because it requires putting too many eggs in one basket (one ID to rule them all. And even "the few big ones" are these days hacked without problems) * because your database of users is your asset (at least in the US). In EU it is more often a liability. * As this is an asset, nobody wants to pay anything for a secure identity as a TTP service. * because it forbids "sensible" use on mobile devices (I have a phone and a PC, I would like to link my phone(s) to my services through numbers rather than on-phone cumbersome username or openid hack) * pairing with a QR code works well for me. It even allows to establish a more meaningful key for further communication (I check the "green bar" of the browser than the underlying, semi-anonymous, DNS-depending OpenID) * because OpenID does not really work for anything than medium-security identification transport. I hope my bank will never use an OpenID to authenticate anything. * just try a new service with a throwaway account. or a throwaway password. Maybe one day people build services, which do not require pairing to "something" at all. Or Just use "click-the-link-in-e-mail-or-copy-token" approach.