ReadWriteWeb

The social networking market and ecosystem are in major flux and the early trailblazer LiveJournal announced today the formation of an Advisory Board that puts to rest any suspicion that the site will be fading away quietly after it was sold to a big Russian media company.

The new Board is made up of an all-star cast. Copyright and corruption fighter Larry Lessig, tech pioneer Esther Dyson and brilliant social network analyst danah boyd make up the group, along with Brad Fitzpatrick, whose work has been key in the development of LiveJournal itself, OpenID, social graph theory and the Google-led OpenSocial. That's hot.

An open source identity platform called the Higgins Project launched the 1.0 version of their service this week and it's a nice look into what could be the future of user-centric identity online. Higgins offers a variety of features and services, but the basic premise is that it serves as a portable container you can use to carry multiple identities with you around the web.

Why would users want that? Because you don't want to sign in to a social network with the same identity card you use to sign in to financial websites. Higgins aims to replace the assorted user names and passwords we all use today with a set of simple, standards-based identifiers that you can take from site to site.

The Wall Street Journal put up an interesting article today about profile thieves. These guys don't want your Social Security number or your bank account information, they just want to be cool. Like you. And they do it by ripping off your social networking profile, word-by-word.

I've been thinking a lot about user centric identity over the last few weeks. One of the 5 Big Themes from the Defrag Conference was the importance of user centric identity. As mentioned in that post, we ended up having one of the leading thinkers in this area, Kaliya Hamlin (a.k.a. Identity Woman) on an episode of Read/WriteTalk. Early in the interview, I asked Kaliya to give me the elevator pitch on user centric identity. She responded:

"Really, it’s about giving people the freedom to move around the web with their identity. Just like we move about the world with our bodies. Now I’d see you in one context and then you show up in another place I go “Oh! That’s the same person because they’re walking around in the same body.” So on the web, we just have handles and there has been no standard until very recently where I could move from one context to another context and take that identity that handle with me and would prove that I’m the same person. Of course, giving people the freedom to aggregate across the network of sites. Instead of having a username and password that’s different at every single place you go."

With standards like OpenId, it's great to see user centric identity moving from a concept to a reality. In the rest of this post, we'll explore:

• Why user centric identity is important
• How it fits into some themes we discuss regularly on RWW
• Finally, opportunities for you to get involved

Why is this important? ... Startup Fatigue

I am included in the group of writers at RWW who receive pitches via our email address tips@readwriteweb.com. I've been amazed at the number of innovative web apps being developed to solve real problems. It seems like at least once a week I come across something that I'd be interested in trying out. The problem is that if a site doesn't accept OpenID, it ends up being one more handle and password I need to remember. Keeping track of all these accounts is exhausting. Over time, it has raised the bar for when I'm willing to actually try out a service. I call this effect sign up fatigue. Interestingly, many of the people I talk to seem to be experiencing the same thing.