Open ID

The innovative use of social networking sites by the Obama campaign for communication, mobilization and fundraising has set the standard for future national campaigns.

The point of all of the online gadgetry is to get people to show up for offline events. "We've tried to orient the tools less as a social network and more as a mobilization network," said Joe Rospars, Obama's online director. "We're creating opportunities for people to get out there and do things -- the campaign is election-outcome oriented."

The easy flow of information to millions of people, particularly those in the 18-29 age group (and younger, as today's 15-year old will be eligible to vote in 2012), so valuable to Obama both throughout the primaries and the general election campaign, will be even more valuable as we become even more wired. However, what happens if we become mired in the web, trapped in the "Walled Garden" as described here?

There's been a growing concern among companies operating social networks such as Facebook , MySpace and LinkedIn -- as well as the hundreds of niche sites that have sprung up -- that too many of these online hubs could lead to paralysis among users. Inevitably, a user with too many sites to visit and update will abandon some, if not most.

OpenID caught my attention because it was utilized by the Obama campaign.

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

As first reported by ReadWriteWeb, President-elect Obama’s website Change.gov now supports OpenID sign in for commenting on certain blog posts and sections of their site. Change.gov uses Intense Debate to power their comment who recently relaunched with OpenID support. As ReadWriteWeb wrote:

Every other major player that has announced support for OpenID has in fact only allowed accounts with their company to be used as an OpenID elsewhere - they have not allowed other OpenIDs to be used to log in to their own sites. That means Barack Obama is cooler than AOL, MySpace, Google and Yahoo!. Maybe you already knew that, though.

Intentional or not, it’s great to see OpenID continue to be built into tools used all over the web whether it be Open Source development frameworks, OS X Leopard, or hosted services like Intense Debate. Putting OpenID in front of such a mainstream audience will certainly continue pushing the community down the path of smoothing out OpenID’s user experience.

As social networking sites evolve, and as political campaigns rely upon them for communication and recruitment, ease of use will be vital to their value.