When I founded Gliph, which ultimately became focused on privacy, secure message and bitcoin, I was actually after identity. I even tried pitching it as an "identity management platform."
Identity felt like hot idea back then ~2011, this concept of owning your own. There was another company that raised a lot of money that was working on it, Personal.com.
I was able to meet with Larry Drebes at the time who was involved early with OpenID, and at the time was growing Janrain which was helping big companies handle user federation.
That year, Chris Poole of 4Chan controversially said Facebook and Google had it wrong: "Google and Facebook would have you believe that you are a mirror, that there's one reflection that you have; one idea of self," Poole added. "What you see in that mirror is what everybody else sees. But in fact, we're more like diamonds: you can look at people from any angle and see something totally different." [0]
Anyhow, a decade has passed and it feels like very little has happened with identity, the ability to control identity away from centralized structures.
My advice to any of them would be that "identity" is not a product. Authentication and federation to specific systems, useful features (i.e. sharing photos of grandkids), these can be made into products.
From my personal viewpoint, I think this is a cool idea and I like the ethos that it seems to come from.
However, anything that does not delight a user is a mistake to build for a startup.
"Reducing the risk" and "building trust" with users means nothing to users when there is no useful product. So instead of integrating this and trying to use this choice to market your product, you should be building a better product and marketing that.
Because this won't sell any product.
Only a fraction of a fraction of people care where data is stored.
So if you have VC capital you should not be spending your time integrating stuff like this you should be building something that people want to use.
Apple is able to play the long game on security and privacy cause they have the cash and market position to do so. It is also the right thing to do, but again they are in a special position to invest in these areas.
Also, this is perhaps not directly related but more context for my parent comment, Larry Drebes' email in 2013 about shutting down Janrain's openID service: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6328182
You are demonstrably right, circa 2011. The example I like is Windows CardSpace[1] which most people reinventing this have never even heard of, which is typical silicon valley. CardSpace had its own problems, but these were surmountable if the market were there.
> That year, Chris Poole of 4Chan controversially said Facebook and Google had it wrong: "Google and Facebook would have you believe that you are a mirror, that there's one reflection that you have; one idea of self,"
I don't know about that. I mean, in that year, Jericho Forum was past the formative stage and was already pushing 'personas'. Google's beyondcorp was based on Jericho Forum principles so, while it doesn't take personas into account, it does have a first-class concept of the trust tier. In my mind, these are related concepts.
But that's internal enterprise-facing.
Externally, consumer-facing as well, Chris Poole was wrong; Google actually did embrace the faceted diamond idea of identity. G+ was launched 6 months before Poole made that statement. G+' primary feature was circles, which are a similar persona/diamond/faceted idea of identity. Not from the authentication POV, of course, but definitely from the identity POV. We all know how well G+ did. Not completely, but a large part of the failure was that people are only good at being a mirror. Circles was a disaster.
> Anyhow, a decade has passed and it feels like very little has happened with identity, the ability to control identity away from centralized structures.
Are you referring to authentication, or identity? Managing multiple identity facets is too burdensome and provides too low utility to most people, and there are exposure risks. The folks that are able and want to manage multiple personas can easily manage it via multiple accounts, can they not? I'd be surprised if people on 4chan use the same username that they do on facebook, for example. They want to keep those completely 100% separate (from observable activity), and are able to do so just fine, thank you very much, within existing centralized structures. I am not sure how a decentralized structure would present an advantage and moreso, an advantage that matters.
A critically important part of the market is market timing. General Magic failed but it wasn't because their product sucked (which it did). It's because the market wasn't ready. But today, we see their legacy everywhere.
So the question is, is the market ready now in 2020? I personally don't think so, but I don't think looking back at 2011 bolsters the argument. The world is very different today. For one thing, you can raise money on a blockchain-based product, regardless of its usefulness. ;) Let's not forget, the point of VC is not to have a successful product, it's to have a successful exit. Your product advice may not be relevant.
Identity felt like hot idea back then ~2011, this concept of owning your own. There was another company that raised a lot of money that was working on it, Personal.com.
I was able to meet with Larry Drebes at the time who was involved early with OpenID, and at the time was growing Janrain which was helping big companies handle user federation.
That year, Chris Poole of 4Chan controversially said Facebook and Google had it wrong: "Google and Facebook would have you believe that you are a mirror, that there's one reflection that you have; one idea of self," Poole added. "What you see in that mirror is what everybody else sees. But in fact, we're more like diamonds: you can look at people from any angle and see something totally different." [0]
Anyhow, a decade has passed and it feels like very little has happened with identity, the ability to control identity away from centralized structures.
My advice to any of them would be that "identity" is not a product. Authentication and federation to specific systems, useful features (i.e. sharing photos of grandkids), these can be made into products.
[0] https://mashable.com/2011/10/18/chris-poole-4chan-web-2/