Re: Gaining WebID Adoption

On 9 Feb 2012, at 11:57, Melvin Carvalho wrote:

> Had a chat with Henry lately and we were wondering about what steps
> would help gain wider adoption.
> 
> Of course everyone is doing their little bit, some people working on
> identity providers, some working on apps, some working on the spec,
> some working on integration, some on frameworks, some working on
> outreach.  All of this is really positive in taking the WebID
> ecosystem forward.
> 
> Some of us have been doing WebID for quite a while now, and naturally
> we all have a subjective perspective on the best ways to make WebID
> more popular
> 
> But maybe we are at the point where we can, as a group, brainstorm
> possible concrete strategies for how WebID can gain wider adoption.
> 
> Does any one strategy stand out?

It may be worth going over everything we have now, pros and cons of
each site, and see what is missing.

For example to be really basic: I don't think we have a WebId creation 
site that is  really good and that works with all browsers. fcns.eu which 
I think came closest to doing a good UI job, does not work on Internet 
Explorer  I think for example. But I may have missed something new 
since then.

It is difficult to do any type of evangelism if the people we convince
show something to their managers or investors and it does not work.
Or if the UI we show people is so complicated it needs a degree
in nerdiness to want to replicate once.

So when we tell people to try out webid we need to show them the best
we have. That requires self criticism.

The demos have improved a lot over time for sure. But they will still
only convince the people we speak to and not their friends, if when 50%
of the people who try it out have it fail.

A site that gives you a WebId should of course also be useful in some 
way, so that one wants to use it more than just for a demo. Even better
it has to have a feature that makes people who use it want and succeed
in getting their friends to easily get a webid too.
 
Then there is the question of either building a site that can create 
users or get sites that have users to implement it well. Melvin has
been talking to a lot of such sites over the years, such as Identi.ca,
but oddly we never see any implementations from those people. The
problem is they never seem to give a good reason for why they don't want
to put some energy into it. Or the reasons they give, we know the be 
wrong. So it could be again that our demos above are just not convincing
enough. WebID has to be extremely simple to use, that has to be its selling
point.

   Henry



> 

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/

Received on Thursday, 9 February 2012 11:23:31 UTC