Two days ago, Ma.gnolia launched their mobile version, and it's pretty awesome (disclosure: Ma.gnolia is a former client and current friend/partner of Citizen Agency). In the course of development, Larry asked me what he thought he should do about adding OpenID sign-in to the mobile version. He was reluctant to do so because, he reasoned, the experience of logging in sucks, not just because of the OpenID round-trip dance, but because most identity providers don't actually support a mobile-friendly interface. Indeed, if you take a look at the flow from the Ma.gnolia mobile UI to my OpenID provider (using the iPhone simulator app), you can see that it does suck.

I strongly encourage Larry to go ahead and add OpenID even if the flow isn't ideal. As it is, you can sign up to Ma.gnolia with only an OpenID (without a need for creating yet another username and password) and so without offering this login option, the mobile site would be off-limits to folks in this situation. So there's clearly an opportunity here, and I'm hoping that out of OpenIDDevCamp today, we can start to develop some best practices and interface guidelines for OpenID providers for the mobile flow (not to mention more generally). If you've seen a good example of an OpenID (or roundtrip authentication flow) for mobile, leave a comment here and let me know. It's hard to get screenshots of this stuff, so any pointers would be appreciated!