Bloglines, the IAC owned online feed reader, made a number of different announcements this morning – most importantly that the company now supports OpenID. At least it is starting to support OpenID, more on the details below.
By some accounts Bloglines is the market leader in online feed readers – by others it trails behind Google Reader. Regardless, the company has been a key innovator in the space for some time and the product is widely used. We reviewed the most recent major overhaul of Bloglines in August.
As of today Bloglines users can use their Bloglines login info to sign in to other sites that support OpenID login. This is good news, but more than a bit underwhelming at the same time. Big companies can announce all day long that they will now let you log in to other sites with their ID – it’s time for them to support OpenID login on their own site using credentials from other vendors. Bloglines’ GM Eric Engleman told me this morning that Bloglines will do just that in early November. Let’s hold them to it.
In the mean time, Engleman said he was excited to be able to log into sites like the new Plaxo and social bookmarking service Magnolia using his Bloglines OpenID. Readers interested in a good pros and cons article on OpenID should check out Wendy Boswell’s excellent post on LifeHacker last month.
The company also made a nod towards other standards it said it was looking into, including oAuth and APML, Attention Profiling Mark-up Language. If Bloglines does meaningfully implement support for either of these standards, it could be a huge event for their communities of advocates.
You can read more about the Bloglines announcements, which also include new mobile features and more granular control over feed display settings, on the company’s blog. OpenID info is hidden away at http://id.bloglines.com/ where no one but geeks will find it and the company will get credit accordingly. Let’s see them put their money where their mouths are in November and let new users log in to Bloglines using their AIM screen names, WordPress.com credentials, MyOpenID.com accounts and more.
