Right on Fred, you touch on many of the points I address with the social net startups I’m advising, although you’re a little nicer about it than I am because the world is full of people entering the space that should stick with whatever they were doing beforehand, that critical mass will likely evade them.
One thing about OpenID. I really like the idea as I grokked the concept and met you and everyone else at the Berkman last summer. Then I started creating cardspace cards, and playing around with them in Firefox and as a login for my blog. Now I’m much more excited about Cardspace in terms of possible adoption rates. Here, have your own ID url isn’t as exciting as as creating, personalizing and expanding your Cardspace card.
Cardspace cards are sort of like personal widgets, with pictures, sounds and more. Much more fun to work with IMHO. Definitely open to discssing the merits of both, and how they will work together.