OpenID Announces Election Results and New Community Board Members

The OpenID Foundation named the winners in the community board elections. Marshall Kirkpatrick has a good post on the issues that voters had to think about as they cast their votes.

Elected to serve two-year terms: Snorri Giorgetti, Nat Sakimura, Chris Messina, David Recordon. Elected to serve a one-year term: Eric Sachs, Scott Kveton, Brian Kissel. All positions will begin on January 1, 2009.

OpenID has a tough road ahead. I’ve written about the need for better marketing and more usability in the past and my concern stands today. OpenID now faces the mega-monster of Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect offers something OpenID doesn’t: traffic. Facebook Connect provides bloggers and application developers a way to get more visibility and potentially more traffic for their stories and applications. It’s more likely that the average Internet user will understand the Facebook Connect process than the OpenID process. This is why OpenID must focus on marketing and usability more than technical standards at this time. 

(note, due to massive spam hitting this story, I’ve had to close the comment form. If you have a comment, send it in via the feedback link above and I will add it. Apologies in advance.)