In its 2007 predictions, Identity World suggests that URL-based identities will take the alpha geek world by storm. I couldn’t agree more:
URL-based identity begins a cycle of real adoption in the blogosphere and alpha geek communities.
URL-based identity overcame many technical and interoperability hurdles in 2006, and got key buy-in from developing communities. 2007 will see the early incarnations of this technology begin a cycle of significant and real adoption in the blogosphere and alpha geek worlds.
I’ve started collecting resources on OpenID over on Ma.gnolia and imagine that in a year’s time, these sources will tell the story of how OpenID, like Firefox, rose from the shadows of former monolithic and proprietary endeavors to become the preferred and predominant open source, decentralized solution for representing oneself on the web. Truly there’s much work to be done and that’s what makes it so existing and worthwhile — it’s young enough and simple enough to still reflect the needs of the individuals whom it serves.
I’ll be writing about this more soon I hope, but I think Identity World has done a group job with their predictions. Now if only ZDNet would follow the advice of their own sages!
Factory Joe 
After Ma.gnolia adopted openID (which was not long after Todd seemed to get interested at BarCamp Earth 06 in Vancouver) I stopped to wonder how the implementation of OpenID might alter the acquisition of a startup. If Flickr or YouTube offered OpenID would it have forced Yahoo and Google to follow? Let’s keep the pressure on.