OpenID ecosystem continues to grow…

As a relative new comer to the OpenID community it is always interesting to see how far things have come in such a short time. When people contact me and mention the times when there were only 3 OpenID enabled sites its almost hard to believe. Well JanRain is pleased to report another milestone for OpenID, over 1,000 websites have signed up for the MyOpenID affiliate program.

What does this mean? Over 1,000 website operators have not only lowered the bar for entry to their site by implementing OpenID support but have also taken the extra step and made it easy for new comers to get an OpenID from MyOpenID.com by becoming an affiliate. The more people who get an OpenID the more the OpenID ecosystem grows and everyone benefits, not just the individual website operator who sees an increase in sign ups, but all other affiliates and OpenID supporters get to ride the tide as well.

In a larger sense this news gives an idea of how well the OpenID community is doing. There has always been a question mark around OpenID regarding the # of users needed to entice sites to adopt OpenID and vice versa. Well in my mind with over 100 million OpenID identities created, and over 1,000 affiliates signed up for MyOpenID alone (MyOpenID is just one of many public OpenID providers) this question mark is very close to being erased.

Who are some of these affiliates? In general MyOpenID affiliates are interested in supporting OpenID (read: awesome) and in making getting an OpenID account as easy for their people as possible. While it is impossible to list every site (some are still in beta or alpha) we do maintain a directory and below is a partial list of some affiliates (in no particular order):

• Ma.gnolia - Social Bookmarking
• Spotplex - Popular News
  
• Creative Commons Wiki
• Treedolist - Hierarchical organizer, cool demo on front page
• The Wine Spies - Wines Online
• Loud Is Relative - Connecting Music Lovers and Concerts
  
• Velog - Social Training log for Cyclists
  
• Wikitravel - Free worldwide Travel Guide
  
• Peeron - LEGO Set Inventories
• Foodio54.com - Local restaurant reviews
• Toodledo - Web based to-do list
  
• MyChores - Track your chores and recurring tasks
• General Pastebin - A public place to paste things
• Jumodir - Your online storage
• IconBuffet - Free Icons, Custom Icon Design
• PerfiTrak - Record, Organize and Analyze your personal finances

How can I become an affiliate? Its very simple, if your site supports OpenID and you want to make it easy for people to obtain an OpenID URL just head over to our affiliate page, enter your site details, get an affiliate ID and you are set!

As an added bonus MyOpenID has recently added a 2nd tier affiliate program which will allow site operators to give people OpenID accounts in the form of username.yourdomain.com. If you are interested in this please contact me via Pibb and I will get you the necessary information.