What OpenID providers should we feature on the /login page?

Question

I did a quick query to see what the current breakdown of OpenID providers is across Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and Super User (but not Meta, as I figured that'd be 100% overlap):

google.com       88,536
myopenid.com     24,316
yahoo.com        16,026
blogspot.com      4,272
claimid.com       4,697
wordpress.com     1,875
livejournal.com   1,694
openid.aol        1,074
flickr.com          481
openid.org          404
mozilla.com         398
myvidoop.com        397
launchpad.net       350
appspot.com         271
technorati.com      267
getopenid.com        75
clickpass.com        60
openid.pl            51
myspace.com          48

I used strikeout to indicate providers that are now defunct (that is, they don't work any more). The actual query counts both primary and secondary OpenIDs and sums across sites (so there's some duplication for users with multiple accounts and multiple OpenIDs) and is of the general form

select dbo.RegexMatch(OpenId, '\w+\.\w{2,4}\b'), count(*)
from Users
where UserTypeId > 2
and OpenId is not null
group by dbo.RegexMatch(OpenId, '\w+\.\w{2,4}\b')
having COUNT(*) >= 25
order by COUNT(*) desc

Here it is in graphical form

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/6807/stackoverflowopenidgrap.png

I was going to ask what other OpenID providers we should feature on our /users/login page, but given the utter and complete dominance of Google, Yahoo, and MyOpenID, is there any reason to?

Note that I have done a few things to the /users/login page already:

1. Escalate MyOpenID to a "top billing" provider
2. Offer a "Click Here to Sign Up!" option which uses a site-specific MyOpenID Affiliate to ease joining if you don't have an OpenID.

I'm still waiting for Microsoft's OpenID support to come out of beta, but at least Google now offers named OpenIDs -- hooray!

Anyway, back to my original question: which OpenID providers should we feature on the /users/login page? Are there any new up and comers?

Answer 1

Jeff, your percentages in the pie chart are wrong, or at least misleading. You seem to be discounting the "long tail".

There are a total of 145,292 users represented in your table. Google's 88,536 users are 61% of only the users in your table. That discounts the sites with very few users (i.e. the users who use their own domain, which will all have COUNT() of 1).

What percentages do you get if you run the query without the having COUNT(*) >= 25 part?

Also, I'd be curious how different the percentages are for just the primary and secondary providers.

Answer 2

I use blogger's open id, but I use my own domain instead of blogspot, so I wouldn't appear in these stats. I imagine many people probably use their own website as OpenID, but underneath its just a reference to one of the big providers.

Anyway, please keep "type in your OpenID" as one of the options.

Answer 3

You should re-run your query to look at new signups in the past 3 or 6 months. I'd bet that at least some of the myopenid and claimid accounts are in use because major provider support was not as widely known or even in place at all at time of signup.

A more interesting question is which IDs users are signing up with NOW.

Answer 4

Wow I now feel like the only one using PIP (from verisign labs)... Freaky...

I guess that one can safely be removed.

Answer 5

I use my own domain name which is redirected to myOpenID.

I'm going to guess you store my domain name (as I believe that's the way openID works -- I can change provider without having to create new logins). So you can count another one towards myOpenID.

I wonder how many of us do similar, thus masking true numbers?

Answer 6

Launchpad will need to be made more prominent on AskUbuntu, at least, and there'd be no harm, I suppose, in making it more prominent everywhere else while you're at it.

Answer 7

I think you should narrow the list to myOpenID, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft when it's ready.

At least, make them most prominent. I think having relatively few choices will help people to pick when they don't know what OpenID is or which provider to select. Make the others less prominent, or hide them entirely in an "Other Providers" slide-out or some such.

Answer 8

Are the 'issues' you guys talk about with Google OpenID fixed? Or will I need to jump through hoops when I log in on each site?

I use Livejournal; and would like for that to stay on the front page; but clearly it's not one of the 'top' ones.

Answer 9

Facebook would be good if it is now working as a provider; a lot of people have Facebook accounts.

Also look at all the email addresses that have been setup on profiles and see witch of these email providers have OpenId providers.

I think most people have chosen the first provider on the logon page that they are happy with, or already have an account with, so the current providers in use may not be a good starting point.

Answer 10

Huge Russian Email services on yandex.com
and German Email services on web.de and gmx.de
all provide OpenID

Also digg.com and slashdot.org have huge community of programmers as well, but probably no OpenID

Answer 11

I use Launchpad.net, as when I first signed up, my Wordpress.com account would not work, and no-one else I was signed up with offered OpenID.

You mean to say there aren't even 50 people here using the same provider as me? Wow. I really am unique. :)

Answer 12

One more idea, independent one. You made total statistics. Nice. But different countries must have quite different habits and preferences in public services used.

Why not split your database by countries and make independent statistics ?

The when user reads the page, you can query geoIP and prompt most used providers targetly for the user homeland. Big chance, those would be really most valuable for him.

For example, Yahoo is not a name for me, thoug I have a Flickr account I rarely use it anymore. I'd use Yandex instead, but Yandex is not a name for anyone abroad Russia - guess for 90% us SO users;

Answer 13

"You're doing it wrong"

You consider that user does know what is OAuth, what is OpenID, and which of many his possible services do provide such.

Okay, on SO there must be savvy people, yet even them may not know about this details of sites they do visit.

So I'd make a simple search field like "Enter your e-mail, page URL or some messaging ID, we'd try to search if they provide OpenId to login here" There, just as user keys in, you can match domains on the go and see if they match you templates database.

Thus you could allow user to use OpenID without both forcing user to know beforehand that he possesses OpenID and without clattering login page with many-many-many OpenId accounts.