We all know how we can end up being a very different person online to in real life (IRL) but we’ve grown to accept that as part of the fun really. Hands up who doesn’t enjoy the occasional foray into being a keyboard hero?

[sidetracked] How come only one gets an acronym? Or is it OK to use OL for online[/sidetracked]

What is frustrating is the multiplicity of logins and usenames you end up with. I’ve almost scaled back mine to perhaps just two main ones with a couple more for emergencies or particular versions of myself. I do try to hold on to versions of the_rebel_mp that I’ve got purely for my own amusement.

But I know at some point I’m going end up trying to log in to some new service and find that someone has already acquired one of my two desired logins. And that really bugs me and why I’m not entirely onboard with OpenID

It’s been ten or so years since I got into this internet lark and since then all my identities have been forced to change with the exception of one. Given the choice, would have have kept them? Quite possibly, but I would have liked the option to change and homogenise them under a new preferred ID.

The problem with OpenId as I see it is that I can have one ID but there’s no guarantee I’m going to be able to use it to bring together my presence on a whole bunch of sites. So I’ve got one through Typepad for this blog, but that’s not tied in with my one for yahoo services such as Flickr, or my twitter identity, or reddit, or my facebook, or my myspace.

OK, not all those use or support openID but I hope you get my point. Essentially it’s the question of what happens when I see a new service that I want to use and manage with my atomicecho identity and discover that someone else has got there first.

Have I misunderstood OpenID, or is this one of those flaws that someone will eventually iron out?