Telegraph and OpenID
OK, this is the big announcement that I was referring to a while ago.
We were asked to help figure out the best way forward for single sign-on and registration generally. OpenID was an excellent fit - but The Telegraph will be going further than simply allowing people to login to Telegraph services with an OpenID from John Q. Provider (although they will be able to do that as well). They will actually become an OpenID provider. Since that decision was made, Google have announced support for OpenID in blogger and, last week, Yahoo! announced that it would issue all of its users with OpenIDs from the end of January. So the Telegraph’s brave move is already looking like a very good bet.
This is a very exciting development in my opinion. The Telegraph is a trusted brand and they have blazed a trail in user-generated content in the UK newspaper world. The Guardian only very recently announced that they would be working with Pluck to provide UGC features - although there was very little detail about exactly what they will support. For some reason, The Grauniad are seen as the innovators in the newspaper space in the UK, although they are clearly behind the Telegraph in some important respects. Let’s not forget that they lost out to the Telegraph in last years’ AOP awards when the Telegraph was awarded the Online Publisher of the Year gong.
So, from the end of February (and I hope sooner than that), My Telegraph and Telegraph Blogs users will be enjoying the benefits of OpenID. Because of the trust in which Telegraph is held - as a major mainstream media brand - we believe that an OpenID from the Telegraph will have that extra feeling of familiarity and security to users of, shall I say, a certain age. It was the ability to reinterpret the technology for the Telegraph’s audience that made My Telegraph a success. Hopefully they’ll be able to repeat the trick with OpenID.
Keep your eyes peeled for more announcements next week.
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