Identity Crisis

On Monday I wrote a bitchy rant about why I didn’t believe that a large software vendor or industry consortium would be the one to create the much-needed identity infrastructure for the web. So who, you are probably asking, is going to make this happen?

Glad you asked. I believe that a good precedent might be the rise of PayPal for online payment. PayPal had a number of characteristics that enabled them to succeed where others (including behemoths like eBay, who eventually bought them) failed:

• They were a small company who could focus on the problem at hand without attracting the ire of large competitors or drum-beating consumer activists.
• They provided a useful service that was dead simple to use (in this case by using email as a transport).
• They focused on a niche (eBay auctions) that enabled them to achieve critical mass without having to take on the whole world in one fell swoop.
• They were lucky as hell.

I believe that the winner of the identity wars will have to fulfill all these criteria. Of course, the solution might come from the open source world, but innovation has never been the forte of that particular crowd. In addition, the need to focus on a specific application area is probably not well-suited to the way traditional open source software is marketed.

Of all the companies on my radar, I see Skype as having the strongest claim to becoming the PayPal of online identity. They are a small company with a very good reputation. They definitely have a killer app in the form of VOIP. If they can figure out a way to make identity information available to third-party providers in a super simple way, they could start to build up critical mass for their solution. For example, imagine that you could register for different websites in real-time using your Skype ID, instead of having to request and respond to an email. It seems like they are moving in this direction with the SkypeWeb and SkypeNet APIs, although the details are still hazy at present.

Of course, it’s not necessarily going to be Skype, but any plausible contender will have to follow this model. Especially the part about getting very, very lucky.

Bookmark to:

3 Comments »

1. I think Skype could be a good guess, and did you see the news that Ebay is in talks to acquire them? Big companies might not be able to innovate but they can certainly buy buy buy!

   Comment by Julia — 9/9/2005 @ 10:12 am

2. Yeah, I saw that though there’s no confirmation that this isn’t just a crazy rumor. Most people (including me) seem to be having trouble seeing the fit. I could easily believe the conspiracy theories that Skype’s investors are just creating “valuation buzz” to push up the price.

   Comment by Matt — 9/9/2005 @ 1:56 pm

3. Barclays fights online fraud with free anti-virus software and text message updates for customers

   Barclays is launching a new online anti-fraud initiative and becoming the first bank to offer free anti-virus software to its customers. Customers will also be offered an innovative text message service notifying them of new payees on their online acco…

   Trackback by Custom Software Providers — 3/7/2008 @ 12:58 pm

Trackback URL RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>