AOL and OpenID

901am points to AOL's announcement that it is going to integrate OpenID into its 63 million user base.

From the announcement:

• "Every AOL/AIM user now has at least one OpenID URI, http://openid.aol.com/.
  
• This experimental OpenID 1.1 Provider service is available now and we are conducting compatibility tests.
• We're working with OpenID relying parties to resolve compatibility issues.
• Our blogging platform has enabled basic OpenID 1.1 in beta, so every beta blog URI is also a basic OpenID identifier. (No Yadis yet.)
• We don't yet accept OpenID identities within our products as a relying party, but we're actively working on it. That roll-out is likely to be gradual.
  
• We are tracking the OpenID 2.0 standardization effort and plan to support it after it becomes final."

From dev.aol:

"Another important point is that you can point at the AOL OpenID service from any web page you own in order to turn its URL into an OpenID. The minimal requirements are basically that you have some AOL or AIM account, and that you add a couple of links to your document's HEAD.

We added this to our blogs product in a few minutes minutes and it's in beta now. You can also support YADIS discovery which gives additional capabilities. See Sam Ruby's OpenID for non SuperUsers for a good summary."

From OpenID:

"OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.

OpenID starts with the concept that anyone can identify themselves on the Internet the same way websites do-with a URI (also called a URL or web address). Since URIs are at the very core of Web architecture, they provide a solid foundation for user-centric identity."