Another great day for OpenID: Facebook, one of the world’s biggest social networks, is adopting the standard as a Relying Party. That means Facebook members can log in to the site with an OpenID from providers like Yahoo!, MySpace, Google, and many more. Also they will be able to sign up to Facebook with an OpenID.

However, the OpenID integration is not implemented yet. If we can believe the announcement, Facebook will auto-detect the OpenID provider if users are already logged into it when coming to Facebook:

Facebook will automatically check to see if users have logged into any OpenID account when they hit Facebook.com, and give them the option to automatically login to Facebook without entering new information.

It will be interesting to see how this works, especially if it works with all providers and not just some of the big ones. Though if it works smoothly, this flow will reduce much of the hassle of OpenID for users. They would not have to provide their OpenID to a relying party anymore if they’re already signed into the OpenID provider already. Actually, it is recommended to sign in to the provider by the beginning of each web browsing session anyway, because it effectively reduces the danger of phishing.

If Facebook integrates OpenID well, it will surely boost OpenID. First, it will signal that large sites don’t have to become providers only. And second, user experience will be improved greatly. So hopefully, Facebook’s implementation will be live soon and we can check it again.

Sometimes OpenID and discussions about it seem so serious, sometimes academic, and sometimes even stupid. Where is the fun? A more casual app for playing around with? Well, if you like beer, it exists: 97 Bottles.

97 Bottles is only dealing with beer. Users can write reviews about their favourite beers, connect with their friends, and even learn more about beer along the way. But what’s so interesting about 97 Bottles that we feature it here, you might ask? Well, 97 Bottles is a relying party, so new users can simply log in to it with their OpenID and create a new account. Users can also create an acocunt by logging in with a username and password. But why should people do that when having an OpenID?

After logging in users can associate the OpenID with an exisiting account or create a new one. It is really good practice that relying parties allow users to associate an OpenID to an existing account later on. Unfortunately, some services don’t do this which is rather frustrating.

As you can see I don’t need to enter my email address and username anymore because 97 Bottles asked for it during authentication and got that data from my OpenID Provider. Of course, the site also features user profiles and unfortunately, the user experience could be better here. Below are screenshots from the profile form:

Most of those form fields could be filled with data from my OpenID Provider (via the Simple Registration extension, or see our Technical Terms). I don’t know why 97 Bottles doesn’t make use of that data. It’s really unnecessary to ask for it.

Though apart from full support for the Simple Registration extension, 97 Bottles is a nice little site which is a lot of fun. Also for the more tech-savvy users, 97 Bottles supports the hCard microformat – hReview would be nice as well, though, but it’s still in beta, so that might change – and makes it easy to find people’s Twitter friends.

Check it out if you like beer!

Yesterday JanRain, the company running the well-known OpenID Provider MyOpenID.com, published its Relying Party statistics. According to those statistics there were 31,185 unique websites by the end of 2008 which support OpenID as a Relying Party. As you can see from the chart below, adoption of OpenID is growing steadily. Of course, those are only JanRain’s figures but I think they are representative as MyOpenID.com is one of the bigger dedicated OpenID Providers and therefore is able to monitor most Relying Parties.

Some of the bigger new Relying Parties are video sharing site Dailymotion, AOL’s MapQuest and Universal Music’s subsidiary Interscope Records.

It’s interesting to see the different OpenID login screens of those three sites:

Dailymotion

The OpenID login screen is available by a link at the end of the usual registration form. It’s good to see that the benefits of OpenID are mentioned directly at the login screen. Also five different providers are mentioned if users don’t have an OpenID yet.

MapQuest

At MapQuest users have to decide first if they want to login with an AOL screen name or with an OpenID. Then the screen below is displayed where some better known (mostly) dedicated OpenID Providers are pre-selected. On Dailymotion mostly consumer brands are pre-selected:

Interscope Records

Interscope Records utilizes JanRain’s RPX service. RPX allows logins with OpenID, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo!, AOL and Google accounts. The login screen is directly available from the frontpage and mentions all supported login methods already via the respective logos. The login screen itself looks like this:

Three different Relying Parties, three different approaches to login screens. I think we will see more variations of login screens in 2009 as usability and user experience will become crucial for OpenID.

Many websites let users log in with an OpenID already, and numbers are still growing. Those sites have understood users’ demands for convenient and secure logins. If you use your OpenID regularly, you have noticed that OpenID provides more features than simple single sign-on on various websites across the web. You are able to circumvent boring and repetitive registration processes because you don’t have to provide required profile information anymore. You’re OpenID provider does it for you, if you have allowed it to do so, of course.

However there are still good chances that your favorite website isn’t supporting OpenID yet. Admittedly I know some people who don’t want to sign up for an OpenID because their daily used web service isn’t supporting it. Well, then make those sites aware of your wishes now. JanRain has launched a small project called Demand OpenID! to make your opinion heard. Just sign in with your OpenID, drag a bookmarklet to your browser and whenever you come across a website that you want to be OpenID enabled, just click it.

Demand OpenID! could be improved a little bit (see Marshall Kirkpatrick’s post on it) but it’s a nice little application to make your voice heard.