Every login that can be eliminated, should be.

I have been thinking a lot about this concept in preparation for The On Button: Instant and Always-On Collaboration, but I don’t know that I ever thought about it in terms of money or value lost… until now.

I believe in eliminating logins because you are walling off possiblilties for your community. I believe in eliminating logins because teachers don’t have enough time to remember yet another password. Logins don’t use the web the way it should be used, pouring feeds together, remixing content and sharing it out again.

Yet, this article seems to suggest that value is lost when logins are involved. When you have true value in your community, logins don’t matter. When you have something that really is “worth something”, putting it behind a login will only ensure that most people will never get at it.

Logins stop the collaborative process short. As much as I love my profile on Twitter and such, I believe that an identity is not tied to a login. I believe that an identity is bigger than a login. If we are creating the right kinds of spaces, with the right kind of respect and safety, we can simply tag our content with our identities, adding value rather than taking it away.

As much as I like this concept, it needs some more thought. I just wanted to share the link and ask the questions: What happens if we remove all of the logins from our lives?

(I also found the link from OL Daily. If you don’t subscribe to that daily goodness, go and do so.)