4 ms·

Ask HN: Is OpenID dead?

Between 1-2% of our users use OpenID. That's half of what it was a year ago and the drop has been pretty consistent even when we control for demographics. When we look at slightly-tech-savvy or mainstream demographics usage is almost zero. What are other people seeing? What about with other options like Facebook Connect? Was there anything you were able to do to boost usage? Here's the data I pulled from CrowdVine on this: http://blog.crowdvine.com/2009/04/02/declining-openid-usage/

wmf 18y ago
I expect OpenID usage to increase as sites adopt usable UIs for it, but I am an optimist.
- tonystubblebine 18y ago
  And what constitutes a usable UI? Have you ever seen any stats on usage jumps between one UI and the next?
  - wmf 18y ago
    Something like https://rpxnow.com/ https://rpxnow.com/
    - tonystubblebine 18y ago
      How do you know it's more usable? If you asked me to bet, I'd agree with you that RPX would improve our adoption rate. But I also would have bet that expanding our support to include OpenID 2.0 would have helped as well. It didn't. I put this out there partially to see if anyone else was looking at the hard numbers.
briansmith 18y ago
For your website, security is unimportant, so the user can just use the password "password" that they use for all other sites where the password isn't important. Logging into every site as brian@briansmith.org/<generic password> is noticably more convenient than logging in with OpenID. Logging in with a username and password is faster than logging in with an OpenID, because the OpenID protocol requires several HTTP requests per authentication, whereas a usernmae/password only requires one.
watmough 18y ago
I've used OpenID to access StackOverflow, and it's a somewhat disconcerting process, involving visiting another web-site, which I do NOT want to think about, since I want to access the visited site. On this evidence, as Joe User, OpenID simply has too many moving parts and will fail. I'd be interested in what the SO experience is. Is it even possible to get on that website without OpenID?
qeorge 18y ago
OpenID is a great idea, but the execution is off. For one, there's too many providers, so I have to remember a weird URL just to login (myvidoop.com? really?). The whole process is inherently awkward. On the other hand, using your Facebook, Google, Twitter, or Yahoo login is easy and familiar. These services don't have the openness we want, but if the goal is to increase engagement I think its a net win.
kevinherron 18y ago
Logging in with OpenID on StackOverflow is fairly easy for me since I've always got my gmail account opened up in another tab. I just click the little Google provider button and I'm logged in, no typing involved.

wmf 18y ago

I expect OpenID usage to increase as sites adopt usable UIs for it, but I am an optimist.

tonystubblebine 18y ago
And what constitutes a usable UI? Have you ever seen any stats on usage jumps between one UI and the next?
- wmf 18y ago
  Something like https://rpxnow.com/ https://rpxnow.com/
  - tonystubblebine 18y ago
    How do you know it's more usable? If you asked me to bet, I'd agree with you that RPX would improve our adoption rate. But I also would have bet that expanding our support to include OpenID 2.0 would have helped as well. It didn't. I put this out there partially to see if anyone else was looking at the hard numbers.

briansmith 18y ago

For your website, security is unimportant, so the user can just use the password "password" that they use for all other sites where the password isn't important. Logging into every site as brian@briansmith.org/<generic password> is noticably more convenient than logging in with OpenID. Logging in with a username and password is faster than logging in with an OpenID, because the OpenID protocol requires several HTTP requests per authentication, whereas a usernmae/password only requires one.

watmough 18y ago

I've used OpenID to access StackOverflow, and it's a somewhat disconcerting process, involving visiting another web-site, which I do NOT want to think about, since I want to access the visited site. On this evidence, as Joe User, OpenID simply has too many moving parts and will fail. I'd be interested in what the SO experience is. Is it even possible to get on that website without OpenID?

qeorge 18y ago

OpenID is a great idea, but the execution is off. For one, there's too many providers, so I have to remember a weird URL just to login (myvidoop.com? really?). The whole process is inherently awkward. On the other hand, using your Facebook, Google, Twitter, or Yahoo login is easy and familiar. These services don't have the openness we want, but if the goal is to increase engagement I think its a net win.

kevinherron 18y ago

Logging in with OpenID on StackOverflow is fairly easy for me since I've always got my gmail account opened up in another tab. I just click the little Google provider button and I'm logged in, no typing involved.