Identity Networks Are Here

You may not have noticed it, but identity networks arrived last week, and the great land rush for identity consumers has begun.

As of right now, there are three major entities who have entered the identity network space.

Probably the first is SixApart. This is a company that offers a hosted blogging service called TypePad (a lot like Blogger, only smaller) and the very popular LiveJournal site. It also sess the Moveable Type blogging software. The people at Typepad made some very encouraging moves recently with the development of OpenID. This in turn, with the addition of two other companies, LID and iNames, became the Yadis initiative.

While commenting on a Typepad blog the other day I noticed that the login had been replaced by something called Typekey. This is “a free authentication service that lets you sign-in to your favorite websites.” This was surprising enough, given the existence of Yadis, to follow, and so I took a look at the Typekey information page, which in turn said, “If you’d like to use TypeKey as authentication in your own application, you can join our Professional Network to find out how.”