Technorati Tags: windows live id, passport

Microsoft has made a Windows Live ID SDK that is compatible with ASP.NET, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

This is very exciting, as it promises that a new web site can instantly leverage Microsoft’s 380 million + base of installed WLID users. What this means is that the barrier to building membership has dramatically been reduced - I only have to prompt WLID visitors to my website to log on, instead of registering. If they are already logged in, I can greet them as an existing member.

I’ll be hacking with this SDK in the coming weeks and will provide updates. The biggest question to me is whether this service will require ongoing partner fees. I found one question on a live forum that remains unanswered. If it does, its a deal breaker for new startups and domainers who want to churn out membership sites. I’d suggest they start the fees at 10k+ membership. This would vastly grow their partner user base and make WLID a standard in a short period. Barring this, WLID will go the way of passport as smaller sites will simply use OpenID, which is already being used by a claimed 4500+ sites.

Some background:

Windows Live ID is essentially the next version of passport, which aimed to be a single sign on service that could span Microsoft partner domains. If I created a site and wanted to leverage passport’s existing authenticated user base, I could pay Microsoft about 10k/year+ for the privilege. They in turn would give me an SDK and an encryption key that would activate the service for my domain. (this is in general how it worked, if someone knows the pricing schedule and specifics, please comment).

Since Windows Live Id was first announced, it has not had a similar partner program, so was limited to only Microsoft’s so called online services which include MSN, Hotmail, and the Live.com services which now include refreshed versions of MSN services plus a ream of new online products intended to compete with google+ (google + the web 2.0 startups)