Last week, America Online made the announcement that they had integrated OpenID support into their Screen Name Service, which is the majority of the grunt work required to enable OpenID logins into the AOL web applications. A short whitelist of accepted providers has been released, and we’re excited, of course, that myVidoop.com made the list.

The announcement was a major milestone in the ongoing discussion about how businesses see OpenID and the business viability of becoming a relying party. Only a day before AOL’s announcement, Dare Obasanjo wrote this piece, where he asked, “Why do you think there is no OpenID link on the AOL sign-in page even though the company is quick to brag about creating 63 million OpenIDs?”

Basically, Obasanjo argues that large, established, account-centric sites will not become OpenID reliers because the creation of site-specific accounts is integral to their business model. As we all know, I hope, an OpenID is not an account (it’s a credential), so the point is that signing into those pages with an OpenID is counterproductive to their goal of driving users to create accounts at their sites. Then it’s more desirable to be a provider than a relier, as only being a provider guarantees account creation for the use of the credential.

Most potential relying parties seem to see OpenID in the same way as Dare Obasanjo does: in terms of the problem of accountless login, and that (along with the perception of asymmetric risk) is why we have so many fewer reliers than providers. As evidenced by their poetically timed OpenID-enabled release, however, AOL seems to disagree.

But Kim Cameron turns this conventional wisdom on its head in his response. Kim challenges us: who says that sign-in has to be accountless?. When a user logs into one of those sites using an OpenID, just go ahead and make an account for him! So now that page views are basically synonymous with account-creation or logins, it becomes desirable to draw as many eyeballs as many ways as possible.

Kim’s ultimate point: “What counts is the ACCOUNT, not the CREDENTIAL. Credentials should be seen as a cost center, and accounts as a profit center.” He makes his case with great clarity, as usual, and suddenly it seems that all the money to be had is in becoming a relying party.

But why can’t the identity provider be a profit center? Kim asks, “Suppose I start to log in to Dare’s blog using an AOL OpenID. Does that make money for AOL?” The answer, of course, is no. But let’s ask a different question: Suppose I start to log in to Dare’s blog using myVidoop. Does that make money for Vidoop? And the answer is yes, thanks to the product placement in the grid and the requirement that users signing in with Vidoop actually point their eyeballs at every single image.

As Kim Cameron tells us, what matters is eyeballs, and that’s what the grid brings myVidoop. So it turns out we already have the solution to the problem that has just come to the forefront. Alone in the crowd, myVidoop has the capability of being a truly sustainable OpenID provider, and if Kim is right, and credentials are cost centers, then OpenID will only succeed if OpenID providers can sustain themselves.

But what if Kim’s wrong about all of that?

Both Kim and Dare sensibly agree that the decision about adopting OpenID will come from a determination about whether or not doing so will be profitable. Dare argues that, all else being equal, OpenID does not add enough profit for reliers; Kim argues that it does. But with myVidoop, all else is not equal. The product placement in the grid allows the simple action of authentication to generate profit.

If Dare is correct, then, in order to succeed, OpenID needs a way for accepting the credential to become a profit center. The soon-to-be-launched myVidoop partner program offers exactly that, which is, in Dare’s view of the world, what OpenID needs to succeed.

We still believe that Kim Cameron is right. But for now, even if you’re afraid of losing money by outsourcing your credential or account-creation in general, there’s nothing to lose and a lot to gain by becoming a myVidoop partner.