With single sign on, will I be able to make a purchase at sears without ever setting up a password, using only my OpenID?

Love that you’ve already gotten to unified reviews” – that is a big step in the right direction.

Sounds like SHC is pushing hard to turn these “experiments” into regular, production site reality – looking forward to it.

Thanks for the feedback. I run the communities for Sears, and I read with interest your comments on Open ID.

Your points are well taken, and I guess you are reading our minds. The intention is to provide single sign on and Open ID across our properties soon.

The community essentially started as an experiment for us, hence the initial separation of church and state. It allowed us to test things with a very engaged audience before making large enterprise bets, but the community has really grown in the last year and we are actively integrating it with the core commerce experience. Open ID is part of that strategy, and I can say that it has been very successful since its introduction on MySears and MyKmart. So we have a strong desire to expand its use.

Single sign on was introduce early last month across our core commerce sites and community will be participating also. So, hopefully all of our customers will be able to connect with us any way they like in short order.

We also have unified reviews across the enterprise as of last night, and last week we introduced a reputation and rewards program, that is showing great promise.

Thanks again for the comments and compliments, we like getting feedback (the whole point of community). Do stay in touch and continue to let us know what you think as our plans unfold.

Rob Harles
VP SHC Communities