Facebook Moves to Standardize and Own Customer IDs - BusinessWeek

Check the full article for more on Facebook’s identity services aspirations

To help Facebook establish ID standards that are even more universally accepted, the social network in August hired engineer David Recordon, co-founder of OpenID, a nonprofit foundation that maintains a set of open standards for Web identity. "Standards are the plumbing layer of the Internet," says Recordon, 23. "In order for them to be successful they have to be freely shared." OpenID was created in 2005 as a way to let people use a single name and password when they leave comments on multiple blogs, and it's currently offered by major Web sites, including Google (GOOG), AOL, NewsCorp.'s (NWS) MySpace, and even Facebook. Yet it's still not widely used, in part because of Facebook's easier-to-use system. "The open community has not met the challenge to provide a better alternative to Facebook Connect," says Chris Messina, an OpenID board member.

Facebook Moves to Standardize and Own Customer IDs - BusinessWeek