Interscope Geffen A&M, a division Universal Music Group, likes what they've seen from JanRain - no doubt thanks to the names "MySpace," "Facebook," and "Google." So they have chosen to deploy RPX across 200 artist sites, enabling fans to login to the sites with the credentials they prefer. In so doing, Interscope Geffen A&M stands to connect a number of artists to their fans - and their fans' existing social networks. Currently, artists like OneRepublic, Robin Thicke, Keri Hilson, The Game, and Lady Gaga all offer access via RPX.

Without a doubt, this is big news for JanRain and their fledgling RPX product. But it raises a question: what does this mean for OpenID?

With RPX, the OpenID logo winds up alongside the likes of Google, MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo!, and AOL. Even the most steadfast OpenID user has to admit that's stiff competition. When it comes to the everyday user, is it likely that they're going to click on the OpenID logo for anything more than satisfying curiosity? Not likely. What's more likely is that they'll choose the login method with which they're most familiar.

Could this be the another step in the inevitable subjugation of OpenID as an underlying technology instead of a top level option? That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Discussions around this topic, in fact, have been swirling for quite some time.

When it comes right down to it, JanRain is providing a solution that solves a problem for developers - how to efficiently implement the variety of logins - and users - how to log into sites with the most familiar credential. As an added bonus, JanRain is getting OpenID out in front of the public at large, putting it in direct context with other distributed login options, and - perhaps best of all - beginning to collect data on which options users choose for their login credentials.

We'll just have to wait and see which path the Interscope Geffen A&M fan base chooses to take.

But JanRain is hoping to change that with the release of RPX, a new subscription-based service that simplifies implementing OpenID. RPX promises to result in more OpenID login opportunities on the Web - and a revenue stream for JanRain.

Earlier this year, that feedback motivated JanRain to simplify the usability of OpenID logins for users. Now, they're turning that same "ease of use" attention to the sites that want to implement OpenID. The result of that effort? RPX, which provides plug-and-play OpenID logins for any site, delivered via a software as a service (SaaS) model.

"We've heard loud and clear that companies want to simplify the registration and sign-in process," said Tore Steen, VP of Business Development at JanRain. "They definitely see the value of accepting OpenIDs, but there hasn't been a clear path for adopting OpenID and other open authentication standards. With RPX, JanRain is providing that path with a simple SaaS implementation."

According to JanRain, RPX makes accepting OpenID logins (and OAuth requests) as simple as subscribing and making a few code changes:

If your website can make HTTPS calls and can parse either XML or JSON, then it can use RPX. You can get RPX up and running in under a day.

For JanRain's customers, RPX carries the benefits of lowering implementation and maintenance costs. Companies gain access to the technology they want while the onus of staying up-to-date on the latest code changes and dealing with other maintenance issues resides with JanRain.

For JanRain, however, the product solves a completely different issue: producing revenue. Offering OpenID services as SaaS, JanRain gains the ability to charge customers a subscription fee based on the number of OpenID logins in play. If the service takes off, so could JanRain.

To date, lack of use cases and general confusion about OpenID implementation techniques have been effective deterrents to more widespread OpenID adoption. It will be interesting to see if the introduction of JanRain's solution - combining ease-of-use with a subscription model that companies understand - breaks that logjam.

Right now the most popular services for users to demand OpenID are Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Facebook, Amazon and Google.

Bumps in the Road

Unfortunately the service doesn't check to see if there's OpenID login already available on the site you're on - so my apologies to photo sharing site Zooomr, for example, if I made them feel at all defensive in testing.

It would also be nice if there was some way to know that the vendors were made aware of the demands. One way I can think of would be to publish a feed of each demand and ping the blogsearch engines with that feed. Then each demand would get picked up by company PR monitoring blogsearch feeds for mentions. I could set that up myself using a scraping service and FeedBurner, but that might not be so nice.

Early shortcomings aside, Demand OpenID is a great and simple idea.

Until now I've been twittering every time I get angry about the lack of OpenID somewhere. Now I'll use the bookmarklet. You should too, everyone should. Demand OpenID is built on the Google App Engine, so it can take the kind of click quantities that the lack of OpenID adoption around the web warrants.

Thanks to the Vidoop blog, a great place to unearth all kinds of OpenID related news like this.

JanRain, owners of MyOpenID.com, and ConfidentTechnologies are both making announcements that could help make OpenID much friendlier. Confident is the half of Vidoop that serves enterprise and financial institutions.

IDSelector

JanRain's new service IDSelector is a login framework that plugs into sites that already have OpenID enabled on the back-end. Just a few lines of code put a friendly interface on top of existing OpenID login.

Here's a sample below:

Website owners can determine which providers are on the drop down list for their site and which order they will appear in. The company says that if IDSelector.com goes down for any reason, the javascript simply won't register and a site's own login field will remain.

Caveats

While this is a huge improvement over the most common practices for prompting OpenID login, there are still a few problems. First, though this is "provider neutral" - it's not a decentralized service and that's one of the best things about OpenID.

Second, it doesn't work perfectly for every provider because there is still a huge maze of different implementations on the market. Yahoo! for example, doesn't want a username here in a URL - you're just supposed to click Yahoo! and then login. That takes you over to Yahoo! to provide your username there.

Some authenticating parties support OpenID 2.0 and some don't. Presumably that will change someday soon.

Finally, this is still URL centric. It's easier than just prompting people for a URL. Though some people contend that this is an easy way to tech people about signing in with a URL, others will no doubt argue that the term OpenID and URLs shouldn't be shown to users at all if this is going to go mainstream.

Confident Technology's RecoginitionAUTH™ to Power Many More Services

If you've seen consumer web OpenID provider MyVidoop's implementation of OpenID login then you've got a pretty good idea of how Confident's RecognitionAUTH works. The technology asks users to identify images that are of a type they associated their account with, instead of using a password.

Today Confident is announcing that a host of other OpenID providers are going to start using the RecognitionAUTH system to allow their users to login as well. ClaimID, Clickpass and ooTao (iNames) will all use enable their users to login using the Image Shield technology behind RecognitionAUTH.

The idea here is that users will never have to read the word OpenID, look at any URLs or otherwise get confused. The service is already in use by a number of financial institutions.

We hear that AOL is also in advanced testing with Image Shield, so the solution could spread much further even faster than it already is in the financial services sector.

Vidoop/Confident is quickly gaining momentum, branching out from their home base in Tulsa, Oklahoma to open a Portland, Oregon office. The entirely revenue-funded company hired OpenID Foundation Chair Scott Kveton and is now quietly hiring up many of the smartest geeks in town, challenging JiveSoftware for talent. Already the home of the inventor of the wiki (Ward Cunningham), the initiator of the Linux kernel (Linus Torvalds), a boatload of RSS and OpenSource-heads, Portland Oregon is also becoming a hotbed of OpenID work. In addition to Confident's office, JanRain is based in Portland as well.

Will Either of These Catch On?

There are a lot of big questions all around OpenID. It's a new paradigm with solid potential and exciting possibilities. In order to actualize all that potential, though - the front door to using OpenID needs to be more accessible. There's a wide range of providers, features and approaches. To learn more check out SpreadOpenID.org.

Both of these seem like great first steps. Which do you prefer? What would you like to see happen to make OpenID more usable for non-technical folks - or for yourself?