Can OpenID change the channel?

As part their 3.0 effort to get back on top - or at least to cease endless comparisons to Google - Yahoo! made a splash this week about adding OpenID to their user experience. While there will be limitations, I says kudos to them for giving this a shot and, perhaps in doing so, giving OpenID a chance to be what it originally set out to be.

In my partner development work, I often talk to clients about the importance of low friction in relationships that are intended to generate demand from one partner to another. And the SaaS world would appear to offer the change to do lower friction deals than we have before because prospects merely have to pop from one site to another to buy something on referral. But is this really low friction? It would be save for the fact that with every passing day the average online visitor's attention span exponentially slides.

What does this have to do with OpenID. Simple. If you send me from one application to another - even if they are complementary of another - and you ask me to set up and insert yet another password, I may very well abort. Even if I can remember it. OpenID - as a concept - has the potential to change the way us BizDev people make deals; make them based only on the marketing and revenue upside and less on what development would be required to make them work.

Since being enamored with the concept though, I have since learned that the path to worldwide OpenID is not that well paved. Microsoft failed with Passport moons ago and there are at least 2 other OpenID-like groups trying to become the standard. Seems to me that by definition there can only be one standard.

But I love the idea. And, as a big Yahoo! fan, I applaud them for the effort.