Technorati to Support OpenID

Technorati Weblog: Blog Claiming with OpenId Technorati is out with an announcement that they are going to begin to support OpenID as a way for blog authors to associate their identity with their blog.

OpenID is a log on system that is trying to bridge the multiple log on systems problem where you must have individual IDs from many different sites.

Whether or not OpenID is successful in the end will likely depend on how many sites adopt it. Six Apart's Live Journal and Vox support it, among others, and certainly having Technorati now support it adds more weight and credibility to the system.

We use OpenID at Zooomr for people to validate identity and log in to their Zooomr account.

Most significantly OpenID is trying to do this in a way that is decentralized and that does not tie your identity to some major corporate interest. This, among other ways is what would differentiate OpenID from something like Passport.

From OpenID's website:

"Who owns this?

Nobody should own this. Nobody's planning on making any money from this. The goal is to release every part of this under the most liberal licenses possible, so there's no money or licensing or registering required to play. It benefits the community as a whole if something like this exists, and we're all a part of the community."

While it may take a while for people to get used to thinking of their ID in terms of a url, in the end the more people that support OpenID the easier life will be made for everyone.

To learn more about OpenID you can see their Wikipedia entry here.

Nice work Technorati!