The Real McCrea

In a blogpost that just went live, Microsoft announced that they are ready to roll on the OpenID front, becoming a provider:

Beginning today, Windows Live™ ID is publicly committing to support the OpenID digital identity framework with the announcement of the public availability of a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Windows Live ID OpenID Provider. You will soon be able to use your Windows Live ID account to sign in to any OpenID Web site!

This is a Big Deal for opening up the Social Web. Microsoft is joining other large providers, including Yahoo and AOL. And more are on the way, based on who attended the OpenID UX Summit last week (and what they said and demoed there). Even the New York Times is talking about it.

If it hasn’t been clear yet, it should become clear soon that we will exit 2008 with OpenID having moved from “promising” to a vital part of the mainstream Internet experience.

Oh, and be sure to check out Dare Obasanjo’s post on the news, that includes a link to a screencast from Angus Logan. (Dare and Angus are both great “open” advocates within Microsoft.) Congrats, guys! Always great to see the open champions succeed in steering the strategies of the biggest of companies. Oh, and clearly props should go to Mike Jones, who was a key champion of OpenID at Microsoft, as I am reminded by Scott Kveton in the post over at ReadWriteWeb:

“It’s a big deal for OpenID because we’re seeing Microsoft ship code,” said Scott Kveton, chair of the OpenID Foundation. “This is Microsoft putting their money where their mouth is. And it’s due in no small part to Mike Jones, who has been working diligently to promote OpenID within Microsoft. I’m enormously excited to see this happening.

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TechCrunch now has a piece up with additional coverage