Towards a Belgian Single Sign-On Media Solution: Four Scenarios from the Market and Consumer Perspective

In October 2014, the big players of the Belgian media industry will introduce a collaborative nation-wide innovation to tackle collectively the challenges of the digital age. The Belgian media industry will introduce a single sign-on (SSO) system across their digital platforms, called Media ID. The Media ID service aims to provide a common federated identity management framework for user authentication and advanced user management for a diverse range of major players and their web- and mobile platforms, hereby giving Media ID the potential to have a market-wide impact.
This paper concentrates on the creation of scenarios describing the potential outcome in terms of user adoption and hence market potential of the integration of a SSO service into the media industry. The scenarios built upon in-depth interviews with media stakeholders on the one hand and focus group interviews with media users on the other hand describe to what extent the innovative service can be implemented by media companies, and how this can change user's online media consumption behaviour and experience. In the discussion of the scenarios, identified requirements for success from the user perspective are privacy (transparency/user control), added value, ease of use, payment integration and security. Requirements for a widespread adaptation from the organisation perspective are integration of additional services/content, the usage of SSO provided user data and the integration of additional digital revenue streams. These requirements to ensure the broad applicability of a SSO service in the media industry have been identified and discussed.