It feels good to be able to talk publicly about Yahoo's OpenID support (developer info). :-)
It's been in the works for a while and I was one of the early squeaky wheels poking people to see if we could get on board. You can see the official press release or the story on TechCrunch. But no matter where you read it, this is big news.
Both yahoo.com and flickr.com will act as OpenID 2.0 providers. That means starting soon any Yahoo! or Flickr user can sign in to an OpenID 2.0 enabled site simply using a reference to yahoo.com or flickr.com.
I've been a fan of OpenID for a long time--not just because of it's simplicity but because of the philosophy behind it. It puts more control in the hands of us: the end users. And it's another milestone in Yahoo! opening up more and more. In fact, I wrote about it almost exactly one year ago in The Tipping Point for OpenID.
Who knows. Maybe OAuth support isn't far off?
Oh, and before anyone jumps on me about this not being "full" (meaning bi-directional) OpenID support, I'm quite aware of that. Consuming OpenID is a different beast that can't happen overnight. Give it some time. I'm optimistic that we'll get there.
Posted by jzawodn at January 17, 2008 10:02 AM
Your blog should support OpenID commenting, btw. Then you can whitelist certain posters so they don't need to be moderated every time.
It's great news, and thanks to you and everyone at Yahoo that contributed to this decision, this announcement is a milestone for Yahoo and OpenID, and will help bring OpenID to its rightful place.
I've wrote about it as well http://technozzle.com/?p=49
Amen to Brad. You should add OpenID support in your blog.
I think it's sort of a bummer that full support was not included. If everybody only published there accounts as openids and nobody let people login, it would be pointless. Openid would not be viable if everybody implemented it like yahoo, but I guess this is a start, hopefully yahoo soon is doing full two way
@Alan - yeah, accepting OpenID logins on Yahoo! would certainly be useful and interesting. That said, we think we can provide the most value to the OpenID technology right now by allowing a large chunk of the web's user base (ours) to use this standard in a way that is easier to understand. Hence, our foray as an OpenID Provider. Hopefully, our efforts here will spur the entry of a whole new set of OpenID Relying Parties, especially ones that have been interested in OpenID but have been waiting for it to go prime time.
Unfortunately, the MS buyout offer sullies the possibilities of Yahoo as an OpenID source.
I want MS to have as little info about me as I can manage.
Beyond that, if MS were to acquire Yahoo, could OpenID at Yahoo survive? MS is historically hostile to open solutions that don't require a MS-tax, and MS has their own Passport/Wallet thing that they want everyone to use, don't they?
