MySpace joins shared identity service OpenID

A screen grab of MySpace.com. MySpace will join the OpenID alliance to begin letting its users take their online identity to other sites and social networks without having to register again.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp's MySpace Internet social network will join the OpenID alliance to begin letting its users take their online identity to other sites and social networks without having to register again.

The move comes after the network decided in May to let its estimated 115 million users globally share their MySpace profile information on some other sites.

OpenID is an open source alliance that, by letting users take one identity to multiple websites, aims to eliminate the need to create multiple user names and profiles.

"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 network's senior vice president of technology, said in a phone interview.

"We hope you'll be able to take your MySpace friends wherever you go," he said.

But initially it will not be that simple.

Existing users will be able to log onto other sites such as online contacts database Plaxo by using their MySpace accounts.

But members of MySpace will not be able to use their MySpace OpenID log into a site like Yahoo, which is also an OpenID member, or vice versa as both are considered "providers" and not "relying parties," Benedetto said.

Providers can create new OpenIDs. Relying parties can accept OpenID members from other sites.

Benedetto said it was just the first step, and MySpace would consider becoming a relying party.

MySpace also added two new sites, movies community site Flixster and events tracking site Eventful, that will support the ability to transfer of user information from their MySpace profiles.

(Reporting by Kenneth Li; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)