Creating Technology that Matters
Posted 6/19/2006 02:17:00 AM |


I'm heading off to the Identity Mash-Up in a few hours, so I thought it might be useful to dash off this side note. Terrell and I spent the majority of the weekend making some big changes to ClaimID. The biggest change by far is that ClaimID is now completely OpenID - as both a producer and consumer. One of the things we realized very early in the ClaimID experience is the value of supporting open standards - now we get to say we've put our money where our mouth is. The reason I'm writing this over here (rather than the ClaimID blog - don't worry, Terrell will give us a big writeup on the blog) is that we still have some work to do - but I will say that once we get everything smooth, we're going to be happily leaving private beta. So Techcrunch, just hold off a few more days, OK? ;)

We invested a lot of time into making ClaimID an OpenID application. The early stages of any product launch are extremely valuable - we realized that by redoing our account system, we'd lose valuable time that could be spent on other, more marketable endeavors. However, once we talked the idea through, it became obvious that going open was the only way. The identity space, especially the space ClaimID is occupying - is very new. It is up to us to set an example - that identity should be open, that we all win by using standards, and that standards - such as the emergent identity microformats and OpenID - completely make sense for consumer identity companies. We win when we enable our customers with the best identity products available - it is as simple as that.

Here's a little list of what we're doing to support open identity at ClaimID:
As someone who spent almost five years doing open source professionally, I've learned the value of competing on ideas. Rather than locking users up, we're opening the doors - now we've got to build the best service out there to support our users. Its not a small challenge.

In the context of the Identity Mash-Up (here is my Attendr), I figured it would be useful to share this information. If we are truly going to be mashing our identities, I couldn't think of a better application to support these efforts than ClaimID. In a sense, this gets me back to the title of this post; ClaimID is truly becoming a technology that matters. Of course, the news stories don't hurt, but the underlying concept - that we are creating a tool, imperfect and ever-evolving as it is, that empowers humans - means we're building something that matters. And as a developer, I know I couldn't ask for anything more.

Even though I promised this was just a side note, I can't write all this without mentioning the incredible folks from Janrain. OpenID at ClaimID wouldn't have happened if not for the crucial help of Brian Ellin, Larry Drebes, Josh Hoyt and the rest of the team. Conversations with Chris Messina and Scott Kveton really got the ball rolling, so a special thanks to them. Hopefully we can pay it forward like all these folks did.


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