I was thinking this morning about how prevalant facebook has become (oh god, another facebook post they cried) when compared to something like OpenID. The reasons are pretty obvious, no point in listing them here. But then I was thinking whether it was feasible to use something like facebook as a kind of identity server. A long time ago I watched a very cool presentation online about Identity 2.0, and as I sat languishing over my breakfast this morning, I thought that perhaps facebook could be that identities authority. I then thought that I was on my first day of leave, and writing some kind of 3rd party authentication hook into the facebook API was not really the sort of thing I wanted to be doing with my leave, so I quickly turned to more important things, like ordering more coffee.
Which was interesting because just now I was reading Tyler’s post now about people nicking his ideas, and from that found this post where Uno mentions an OpenID/facebook thing. Sounds like it could be kinda like what I was thinking of this morning. Which reminded me of somthing somebody once told me: he believed the moment you had an idea, you “put it out there” – in a hive mind/hippie kind of way. But in a way it’s true. Very few ideas are original and even if you have an original idea, it’s not worth anything unless you act upon it. So if you have an idea, you’ve put it out there and someone else is also going to think of it. So do something about it. Or don’t complain when someone else does it.
My point then (and I do have one) is, good luck to the dude writing the OpenID/facebook thing. I think it’s a fantastic idea (because I thought of it) but I’m not going to do squat about it. So it’s really his idea. Or the dude in Michigan who’s about to launch it. Or maybe that other guy in London who’s just ironing out the last bug in the code. Awesome, I look forward to using it. When I get back from leave.
