Will Digital Identities ever be open?
Got a sense that the first battle for open standards in digital identities is already lost with Microsoft & AOL going for their closed proprietary platforms.
Combined they must have around 200 million registered users that they’ll try to active as digital identity users within the next 9 months.
In terms of end user experience what will an open standard do better? What’s the value proposition compared to Microsoft Passport/AOL Magic Carpet ScreenName.
Hopefully we’ll see a world where end user applications offer MULTIPLE digital identity platforms as choices – but don’t bet too hard on it…

Trust?
The only major value proposition seems to be that i can store my personal data with a provider that i trust – personally i wouldn’t feel secure with Microsoft & AOL – but in the real world 40-60% of the world’s internet population trust Microsoft and AOL with their email, internet access, web browsing, instant messaging, credit card information, etc. In fact Microsoft and AOL already has most of the information one will store in a digital identity to begin with…!

Will digital identities offer enough end user value?
Another issue is whether we’ll ever see digital identities have enough value if they’re not based on open standards – will there be enough services that support each proprietary platform to make it valuable? (The same problem can be seen in the instant messaging space at the moment – Metcalfe’s law isn’t in effect because of the proprietary closed platforms such as ICQ, AOL IM, MSN Messenger, etc.). Is digital the identities the next hypewave that end users won’t adopt in the end?

Prediction/Hope:
Digital identities will flop! – but the flop will get the different players together to agree on open standards. But expect it to take 18-36 months for open standards to emerge and prevail. But in order to make this prediction come through we’ll have to see some activity in standards bodies (w3, ietf, etc.) very soon.

Let’s see who can make it through the beginning rounds of this interesting market. Local danish company Speednames is definately one of the players – and the only startup focused on digital identity that i’ve heard of…