OpenID is way too abstract for people outside of the industry to figure out.

I think they would/could have more chance of succeeding if they had also promoted themselves as being an official provider (e.g. you could register for a profile/identity mathewsanders.openid.org).

At first you could use google as a delegate but the urls were crazy long (like a huge hash) impossible to remember/type. I think they allowed you to claim a name now.

I used livejournal delegated through mathewsanders.com but it felt really *weird* to have the livejournal branding popping up when I was signing into something completely unrelated - too much happening at once.

Decentralized protocols don't catch on outside of the geeks. Just look at tent.io great idea, i dont think it'll ever catch on :)

I don't think it's the decentralized part that stops non-geeks, it's the transparency of it (where people are all WTF?!). I mean Napster and torrents did/have caught on with non geeks - it's just all that confusing stuff is hidden away (well hidden a little bit).