Flutterby™! : Protocols

It is, perhaps, an obvious point, but I thought Dave Winer: Protocols don't mean much bears reiterating:

Formats and protocols by themselves are meaningless. That's what I say about specs. Show me content I can get at through the protocol, and I'll say something.

Yep. And this is why OpenID has failed: Nobody wanted to consume it, and it was too difficult to implement. People got involved in trying to shoot a beer can to the moon, and not solving one good use case that everyone could adopt.