I learned from Carsten Potter that myOpenID has just launched myOpenID for Domains. The new service makes it even easier for you to make your domain your OpenID. As I’ve said before, using domains as OpenID URLs is essential for personal ownership of identity online. Congrats guys, a great move.

OpenID is pitched as an open and decentralized identity system, designed “not to crumble if one company turns evil or goes out of business”. This is great for the system, but still fails the user if their identity across the web is tied  to that evil/bankrupt company. The system persists but the user is screwed.

The ‘big wins’ for OpenID thus far have been the decision by Yahoo, AOL and Google (well, Blogger) to become OpenID providers. It could now be assumed that most people online would have some kind of OpenID whether they knew it or not. This was a great step forward for encouraging relying parties and OpenID’s standing in general. However in the rush to embrace a URL-centric identity and tell people to make their Google/Yahoo/AOL URL their OpenID, we seem to be forgetting that it matters what kind of URL we use. It’s not enough that one URL is able to represent and authenticate who I am across the web, that URL should be in my control and portable, so that I am able to change my provider should I find out that they have been collaborating with oppressive regimes or their servers run on the blood of baby seals. We don’t need URL-centric identity, we need domain-centric identity.

With URL-centric identity we are locked to a particular provider, stuck with the unattractive choice of staying with that company no matter what it does (or does not do) or performing the laborious task of going into every site that we have ever associated with that OpenID and making the necessary changes. The system is set up to encourage stasis. With domain-centric identity, I control the URL that represents me. If my current OpenID provider provides poor security, fails to keep up with the pace of innovation or engages in practices I dislike I can change providers simply and easily. My identity is in my hands and the system is set up to encourage innovation and competition for my business.

Some might argue that people don’t care about who their OpenID provider is as long as it’s secure, but recent experience suggests this isn’t true. The SXSW OpenID panel saw a surprising number of questions fielded about the idea that OpenID seems to be moving towards an oligarchic version of Microsoft Passport in which two or three big companies controlled our identities. The less than comforting answer was that two companies is better than one. The potential acquisition of Yahoo makes that answer sound even more alarming.

Kaliya Hamlin recently wrote a post titled ‘What about Flickr?’ discussing the consequences of Microsoft owning Yahoo: ‘now with this hostile take over situation with MSFT it could be owned by THEM. It is really devastating to think that all the energy I and others put into this space would be owned by THEM.’  For Kaliya, the nature of the company that provides the service is as important as the service they provide. How would she feel if she used Yahoo as her OpenID and it was suddenly owned by THEM too?

If OpenID was designed so that no one company owns the identity management system for the web, making a domain your OpenID ensures that no one company owns your identity for the web. The easiest way to make your domain your OpenID at the moment is through delegation, and Simon Willison has written a handy guide on how to make that happen. For those without domains, chi.mp will be providing them for free later on in the year.

Delegation and domain-centric identity means greater competition and innovation between providers not just to attract new entrants to the market but to retain current customers. It means I have sole control over who I am across the web. If the OpenID community really wants to put people in control of their identity online, there should be less talk of signing up with behemoths and more talk of delegation, less talk about Yahoo OpenIDs and more talk about our OpenIDs.

It took Europe 800 years to break the stranglehold of the feudal system, and the social networks six years to bring it back.

The feudal system gave Europeans their identity: you were a landowner or you were a serf. One was more fun than the other. Serfs were bound to the land, without freedom of movement. Their homes and belongings were property of the feudal lord and their labors lined someone else’s pocket. A serf could escape, but they would have to leave with nothing, never to see families and friends again. The barriers to freedom were intentionally high.

In the last few years the online world has seen the rise of personal identity. We are no longer just pistonheaddave or topcattone, anonymous monikers for flaming or gaming; we are Dave Morris or Tony Haile, we Google others and expect to be Googled, our flirting and romance is just as likely to take place online as it is in a bar. There are people whose perception of who I am is governed 20% by a shared flight and 80% by my facebook page. However, these identities that define us so much are bound to the company in whose site they were created, just as serfs were bound to the land in which they were born. We own nothing and if we leave we leave with nothing. Welcome to feudalism 2.0.

I don’t have the freedom to move the facets that make up my online self from Facebook to LinkedIn or Myspace, my content and relationships are the property of Facebook, as are the words exchanged with friends; I can’t message my Myspace friends from Facebook. My content is their content, my relationships are their relationships and my communications are their communications. I can escape and start a new life somewhere else, but if I do I do so faceless, barren and alone. My identity becomes fragmented as I move from site to site hemorrhaging the words, photos, messages and relationships that make up so much of my identity online. Old friends communicate with the ghosts of profiles past, not knowing that I have slipped away and begun (again) with nothing.

I don’t want to be too quick to judge the social networks, they have every right to do what they do, and we wouldn’t use them if they didn’t provide a valuable service. Going further, many would say that this post is a story about a pain that simply isn’t there. Most seem not to mind that who they are is owned by Mark Zuckerberg or Rupert Murdoch. However, might it be that, like the serf whose horizons did not extend beyond the fields his father tilled, we’ve not yet been able to conceive of anything better?

We need an Enlightenment online. An evolution of personal identity that says I’m free to throw sheep at people on Facebook or explore new bands on Myspace, but my content, my contacts, and my communications are in my control not theirs. I want people to be able to connect and interact with me  through one unique identifier that doesn’t change, no matter where I choose to host my identity. I want to own my identity, I’m tired of being owned.

A group of us have started Chi.mp to try and jump-start this evolution of identity. We are building a Content Hub and Identity Management Platform that can be deployed on any domain and puts the individual in control of their own identity. People using Chi.mp will have identities that are importable, exportable, interoperable, portable and most importantly theirs. By deploying it on the domain of your choice you can move from Chi.mp to another identity provider without losing the unique signifier that represents you. Oh and if you don’t have your own domain we’ll give you one (like everything else) for free. We’re turning the social networks inside out and making the Internet the Platform again.

This blog is an opportunity for some of us within the team, in particular Josh Porter, Brian Oberkirch, Myles Weissleder and myself, to delve into the area of identity online and engage with those who are interested in domain-centric identity and Chi.mp. After all, persistent identity online is the opposable thumb of the Internet; hopefully now we can all catch on. . .