] TypeKey helps ensure that people who comment on a site
] have a verified identity, keeping conversations on track
] and helping to prevent abusive or offensive content
] (comment spam) from being posted.

Moveable Type's solution to comment spam was to build their own version of Microsoft Passport.

1. One wonders why they didn't just use Microsoft Passport.

2. I predict that because most net users have the IQ of a rock they won't understand that this is exactly the same as Microsoft Passport. Furthermore, they will think its a "great idea" and wonder why no one did it before. They won't be at all concerned about the privacy of their data because its not the architecture of the system that is important but who made it that matters.

3. TypeKey currently doesn't share information about how to interoperate with their system. They hint that people will have to pay them money in order to interoperate. Depending on the costs associated with that they may or may not expand this little service outside of the world of their own software. They are unlikely to get this right.

4. It will be interesting to see how their system actually works. If they developed a good enough protocol an open source typekey system would enable people to run their own identity servers that are compatible with moveable type. Its easy to mis-design a system like this so that it doesn't really work well for such a purpose.

5. There is a remote possibility that if the protocol is right, the money is right, and MT's perception in the user community is right that this could become the way that everyone shares authentication information on the internet. Its unlikely, and it won't happen in way that MT likes (they'll loose control). But its possible.

TypeKey