Darrell Silver!

Chris Messina casually asked what I thought of today’s Jelly Talks, a webcast discussion between him and Dave Morin over OpenID versus Facebook Connect.  I wrote so much I figured I may as well post my response:

I enjoyed the talks, but since you asked… I think you were too nice.  Dave was up-front enough to say that there’s no good reason FB can’t support OpenID today.  I bet he even thinks they should.  I bet a lot of people at Facebook want to support OpenID.  I especially liked your argument that yesterday’s protocols and open standards (often taken for granted) are the core building blocks of today’s web.  And that tomorrows building blocks will be built today and thus need to be open to be successful.  Facebook was written on and desperately needs yesterday’s open technologies.

I say you were too nice because Facebook is naturally driven to compete instead of ally with OpenID, and won’t change unless 1) it’s important to their users 2) they perceive a value in supporting something they cannot fully own.  As users, we don’t care about OpenID or Facebook, we only want the simplest sign-on experience.  But OpenID is a long-term endeavor, shepherding today’s tech toward tomorrow so it can be taken for granted.  As developers, we really care about what’s easy to implement but even more about what we’re locked into.  OpenID is currently getting womped by Facebook Connect on the short-term stuff; ease of interaction and implementation.  This has got to become a non-factor quickly.

OpenID appeals more to developers, and that’s where it out competes Facebook Connect.  To win over a developer, you have to bring to light the lock-in that Facebook Connect carries with it.  For me that means stop being so nice and make this factor the central argument to Facebook and developers.  Easy use and implementation is the trojan horse inside of which Facebook Connect delivers lock-in.