Dick Hardt – The Emerging Age of Who

I was ten minutes late to the first session of the CarsonWorkshops The Future of Web Apps conference because I took the wrong bus. By the time I got to my seat, the auditorium was full with techies illuminated by the glow of laptops and Dick Hardt was on stage talking about Identity 2.0. Dick Hardt is the founder and CEO of Sxip Identity. Dick stated that a good indicator of future behavior is past behavior and our future behavior can be gathered from the fragments of our digital identity that is held on disparate systems.

Not to long ago, Yahoo bought Flickr and Delicious. In the case of Flickr, users are asked to login with either a Flickr or Yahoo account. In the case of Delicious, Yahoo chose not to confuse the matter and left the login system alone. Dick reminded the audience that in the case of Ebay, who owns Paypal and Skype, chose to keep the distinct user systems in place for each site.

One piece of advice suggested by Dick Hardt, and repeated by other speakers, was to integrate your login system. If you have more than one website, try to use the same system so that you can provide seamless access to your new service to existing customers. Typical users have way to many logins to remember as it is. I have accounts in Gmail, Flickr, Delicious, Digg, Yahoo, Ebay, Paypal, Skype, and a more. As Dick made me understand, it would be nice if my Slashdot karma could translate well to my Ebay seller rating.

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