mlapida

While working on this web site, you might notice a trend in my posts, I have come to a OpenID crossroads. I want to implement some sort of open authentication in the site, and what better time to do it than in the early stages. That being said, picking the right one has proven to be quiet difficult. There are at least five different technology’s that all look appealing, but the real winner will be the one that offers the sites users the greatest chance of already having an account, as well as pull in the greatest amount of user data.

The hands down favorite seems to be facebook connect. It seems like this service has the broadest user base, and has the ability to import the most user data. Who doesn’t use facebook in some capacity, and isn’t the ultimate goal to make the sign-up process a representation of how easy the service is to use. Now that the site has its own authentication system, adding in another method wouldn’t be very difficult at all, and the supporting community makes it easy. All that, and users can link data with their facebook friends, and use other serivices available in the widely popular social network.

The only issue I have is that I feel like I’m betraying my Google roots. Many people do have GMail accounts, but I only know one other person that has taken the time to fill out a user profile. I would only be importing an email address, and maybe a name. The rest would need to be manually entered. 

In the end, I think this may just be somthing that needs to wait for a community response, once there is a community to respond. Back to focusing on doing the basics well. What do you think?