MySpace links up with the OpenID Foundation

Social network MySpace has announced support for OpenID, an open standard for simple user identification and authentication on the web. In the framework of its Data Availability Initiative, the social network has also started cooperating with film exchange site Flixster and the Eventful event tracker. MySpace users will be able to register for these sites easily and link their MySpace accounts with their accounts on those sites.

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Furthermore, according to one report, MySpace has relaxed data availability rules for developers. They can now cache certain profile data, such as favourite films, job, and hobbies for 24 hours. They can also store core profiles, which include data such as nickname, birthplace, age, and sex.

The OpenID 2.0 standard is one of many approaches to identity management on the web. These relieve users of having to create a separate username and password for every website that requires a user registration. OpenID is a decentralised service that gives a user the choice of which OpenID provider to use. Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, Yahoo and others support OpenID.

(trk)