Email address as OpenID

Just a strange thought I had this afternoon, based mostly off of a report I’ve been drafting (on the market opportunities of demographically-specific technology addictions), which highlights some interesting points:

Everyone on the internet uses email.

I’ve played around with http://identitu.de, which takes your Facebook account, and turns it into an OpenID. Which is wickedly cool – if you have a Facebook account.

But what if all you have, is email? Could we take email accounts, and verify them (using IMAP or POP3), and present THAT as your digital identity?

I think we can. Watch this space for my attempt.