openid
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
The record's 'openid' with a 2009 shutdown most plausibly refers to FreeYourID, the OpenID provider service that shut down that year. Launched in February 2007 as a partnership between the OpenID company JanRain and the Global Name Registry, FreeYourID let users register a personal .name domain name (e.g. first.last.name) that doubled as a custom OpenID identifier, website URL and email host.
02 / openid FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
FreeYourID never gained significant traction in its two and a half years: it failed to monetize OpenID, as nobody had shown that individual consumers would pay for identity online. TechCrunch noted the company gave no explanation for the shutdown, but suspected it was linked to VeriSign taking over the service's main backer in late 2008.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Launched
FreeYourID launched in February 2007 as a partnership between JanRain and the Global Name Registry, offering personalized .name domain names that served as OpenID identifiers.
- Shutdown
On July 25, 2009 FreeYourID emailed its users that the service would be discontinued on August 15, 2009, after nearly two and a half years in business.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Users were given until August 15, 2009 to manage their .name domains: they could extend registration with payment or retrieve a transfer authorization code to move the domain to another registrar.
- 02
Domains that were not transferred were automatically moved to Key-Systems GmbH, an ICANN-accredited registrar, which took over the .name services.
- 03
No loss figure was disclosed for the shutdown.