It appears that retail giant, Sears Holdings Corporation is teaming up with OpenID to allow around 1 million of its customers to sign in to MySears and MyKmart via OpenID, which is a service that lets people securely log into a website via Facebook, Google, Myspace, AOL, Twitter and other similar types of common accounts. OpenID has been around for quite some time, and while we’re used to seeing it for a wide variety of websites, this is its first appearence on the big retail scene.
While it may be a stretch to call it a bold move, at any rate it should be a smart move for Sears. Being able to sign into their community based sites via one of your social networking accounts means that you’re more likely to write product reviews and share product and sale information with friends. Encouraging this type of social word of mouth is huge, and the key to getting that kind of golden advertising is making it as easy as you can on customers – and allowing them to sign on with an existing account (rather than creating a new one) makes it about as easy as pie.
From TechCrunch:
“In my recent interview with OpenID evangelist Chris Messina, he expressed the hope that integrations outside the technology industry – such as the U.S. government – would at some point occur more often, but he also acknowledged that the initiative struggles with branding and getting the word out there.
It’s integrations like these that could really help OpenID gain more traction, but the main question will always be if OpenID is just a solution looking for a problem, or if there’s a genuine need for a decentralized, universal login standard.”
Chances are that while this may not be a bombshell move, I do think it will encourage people to be a little more active in reviewing products, especially since Sears is going to give away discounts and special promo coupons to participating customers. Everybody likes free stuff, and everyone loves being able to log into a site without creating a new account.
I think it’s a win-win for both companies (Sears and OpenID), but we’ll see what happens.
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