Murphy's Law: Unfolding the Future of the Social Web with OpenID

Posted 04/30/2009 at 6:00pm | by David Murphy

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A large part of the Web as we know it today is built around independent communities. Think about it. You have a login for your Twitter account, a login for your Facebook account, a login for your [insert favorite Web site here] account. And while each of these independent entities can play with each other via plugins, coding trickery, or outright hacks... you're still stuck in three separate sandboxes at the end of the day. Does Twitter know what I like on my Facebook page? Can Amazon take a gander at my current interests and suggest related purchases? Do any of these sites know who my friends really are--not just the people I tweet, but the people I email on a regular basis?

While that's the current state of social affairs on the Web, it's not necessarily the future. Open-source projects like OpenID are paving the way for a new generation of connectivity, one where differing Web entities come to you for information and display it in a format and location of your choosing. Instead of jacking your life into the Web on a variety of fronts, you will have one point of interaction, one location to present your information. The litany of daily sites you visit will become more accurate, customized elements for your lifestyle. And best of all, you won't have to login to 85 different places to make it work.

OpenID is just one of the open-source Web technologies that are leading the charge into this new social sphere. In case you haven't noticed this little element appearing on sites like Wordpress, Livejournal, and Google -- amongst more than 25,000 others -- here's how it works. The basic approach of OpenID is centered on the login experience for Web sites. Rather than having to remember a login and password for the unlimited number of sites you likely visit in a day, OpenID allows you to choose a single provider as the source of your digital identity in cyberspace. Once you've selected a common user name and password, you can use this -- rather than a site's proprietary login/password specifications -- to interact with anyone who supports the service.

Technologies like these, and Facebook Connect, make up what Forrester Research's Jeremiah Owyang dubs the "Era of Social Colonization." Like the rise of humans from primates to people, Owyang has crafted up a series of timelines for the evolution of the Web's social experience. We're currently in stage two, the Era of Social Functionality, highlighted by a growth of interactive applications that transform social networks into more than just meeting grounds for talking parties. Or, to put it blandly, we've moved from a chat room to an interactive portal. 

DestinationCRM.com does a great job of illustrating the differences between these eras, so I'm not going to lift their work in favor of pointing you to the source itself. Suffice, the light at the end of the cyber-tunnel is expected to start around 2011, when the power of online groups begins to replace the importance of top-down brands. Companies will engage communities to shape and develop their products, and the power of social networks and one's personal connectivity will be the driving force behind distributed content. Corporate Web sites will lose their relevancy, as companies will be forced to interact and engage customers based on their social identities, rather than waiting and letting customers "find them" or their products.

In essence, OpenID is but the first drop in the bucket toward a more connected Internet experience. As the walls between social networking and social commerce begin to blur, peer-to-peer trust is going to emerge as the ultimate arbiter of what's hip, what's hot, and what's horrible on the Web. I suppose that means we're all going to become a bunch of Newegg reviewers in the future. But that's the power of the community -- and it's a new force that companies are going to have to adopt and cater to, should Owyang's predictions hold true!