Last month I wrote about 2007 being “The Year of OpenID”. Much of this was based on the buzz surrounding AOL, Digg, and others displaying their support of the new identity standard via becoming OpenID providers. In order for OpenID to become the online identity standard in 2007, let alone ever, there will need to be a movement within the industry. Given that most of the leaders in the industry are bloggers, and OpenID has become increasingly popular with bloggers (as illustrated below), I think that it is definitely possible for this movement to take place.

Yesterday, Nik Cubrilovic highlighted the problem. Although all these people are becoming OpenID providers, they aren’t accepting it as a login. How do we take the initial movement that started a couple months ago and make it a reality? We need the thought leaders within each of the major organizations that currently maintain identities (MySpace, Match.com, AOL, Yahoo, etc) to start accepting OpenID as a valid way of logging in. There is no way of piquing the mainstream’s interest of OpenID until the mainstream begins to see at least one OpenID login. The mainstream definitely isn’t going to any of these sites that support OpenID. So how about it thought leaders? Will you make OpenID a reality, or will you let it pass?