My Homepage is my OpenID

OpenID is a lightweight url based signon and identiy system.

This means that I can use an internet address (url) like http://paulpanther.com/ as login identifier to other websites. OpenID provides a mechanism to verify that I am in control of that certain url. As such OpenID is a signon system. It is even a so-called single signon system where you only need one identifier (and password) to log into many sites.

But because of its url characteristic my OpenID identifier is also a clickable
target in the web. And that target could reveal even more information about me. So, whenever I log into a site with my OpenID and leave a comment or contribute an article that site could link my content to the target of my identifier. As such OpenID is an identity system, and if used in smart ways, even a reputation system.

Now it seems quite self suggesting that I want my homepage as an OpenID.

When we started thinking about urls and identity at Jimdo it quite soon became clear that we wanted to support OpenID as both the single signon and the reputation system. Single signon, because we find that users already have to remember too many names and passwords today. And we wanted to support the reputation system because we believe that our users will greatly benefit from using their homepage names as their OpenIDs.