Josh Levy's dashboard

Thanks Thor for your quick reply.

The more relevant and good example that _exactly_ answers my question is here: http://developers.getsatisfaction.com...

"You could, for example, allow users of your system to link their accounts to our accounts so they don't need to login to satisfaction when they want to ask a question about your service."

I hadn't seen that at first glance, so chapeaux to you guys!

I'm happy to announce that we have completed support for OAuth in our new open API. This gives companies a huge amount of control over how they pass-through their logged-in users without requiring them to register anew. Read about it here: http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2008/...

OpenID support is coming next.

We'd love to integrate our user accounts with our section on GS, but forcing users to create a new account is counter productive. Like the comment above referring users creates unnecessary friction.

So I would like to ask a more concrete question to this discussion.

Can you give us examples of how we can use OAuth to hook our existing users into creating an account and getting them going nice and quickly?

Using OAuth would be perfect to create a transparent support mechanism using the our own user accounts without having to rebuild your (very good) interface for community based support.

I agree. I don't know if OpenID really makes things much simpler (it's still a very confusing process for most people). An app that just launched that lays on top of OpenID and makes the experience easier is Clickpass.com. You might like to check it out.

What's going to happen sooner than OpenID is our implementation of OAuth, which is coming out with our API release. Integrating OAuth will let a site pass user information to us in a secure fashion. That means the site you're coming from can set up an account for you (or check to see if you already have one). It's easier to understand because you're moving from one trusted network to another. Much like the handoff between a great airline and a good hotel service. The work gets done for you.

Just to chime in...

I would love it if opensatisfaction would support OpenID. This is just the sort of Application that would benefit greatly from it. Users can leave questions/suggestions for other companies without having to go through the hassle of creating a new account.

I must admit.. it is not much of a hassle to create an account, but it is still a new account. Which, for me, means another user/pass I have to track.

Hi Thor, sounds like good news. I'm not very familiar with OAuth. What would I have to do on my site to leverage OAuth. For example, would I have replace my existing login system with OAuth to take advantage of this?

Josh, you'll be happy to know that OAuth support is indeed part of the upcoming API release.

Just want to chime in and say I agree with all of the above comments. Referring our users to GS and then having them sign up adds some unnecessary friction. The process should be seamless to go from a company's site to the GS customer support section. I believe GS is in the business of doing everything they can to get people to comment or ask questions once they get to a company's GS page, this can only help increase commenting/questioning.

@Scott, email authentication is certainly interesting but brings on a whole other level of security implications. Glad to hear you guys are looking at accommodating multiple authentication services...

Obviously, since BeenVerified profiles act as OpenIDs, we'd love to see some OpenID support :)...

Check out OAuth also for the API work you guys will be doing...