MySpace members will soon be able to use their login details to get access to some other websites.
The social networking giant, which boasts more than 100 million accounts, has signed up for the OpenID initiative.
The project aims to ease Google helps the web to go social ...
MySpace lets users share data ...
Facebook agrees child safety plan ... the mental load of going online by letting people use one set of login details for many different places.
Sites such as AOL, Blogger, Flickr and Yahoo already use OpenID.
"All this will tie together to make it more useful for MySpace users to have MySpace accounts even when they're not on MySpace," Jim Benedetto, the company's senior vice president of technology told Reuters.
However, MySpace is not letting its members use their login profiles and details on any site. It has set restrictions on where the login details can be used based on whether those sites create or accept OpenID profiles.
It will only allow MySpace details to be used to get access to what are known as "relying parties" - organisations that accept rather than create the portable identities. Sites such as Plaxo are relying parties.
Initially, OpenID profiles created from a MySpace account will be blocked from being used on sites regarded as "providers". In the OpenID scheme sites that let create OpenID profiles for use elsewhere are "providers".
Similarly, MySpace will not allow people who get an OpenID from a provider, such as Yahoo, to use that to login to the social network site.
It said in the future its policy would change to let members get the most out of OpenID.
It is estimated that more than 4500 sites accept OpenIDs and there are about 120 million OpenIDs in use.
(BBC)
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