Readers' need for a common registration platform is being answered by at least one newspaper -- the U.K.'s Telegraph. Community editor Shane Richmond announced the change via his blog:

The Telegraph will soon become the first newspaper in the world, and the first British media company, to become an OpenID provider. Readers will be able to begin using the service from the end of February.

OpenID is a decentralised registration system that will offer enormous benefits to our users. Once you have an OpenID login you can use it at any of the supporting services, including AOL, Orange, Digg and Blogger. Having to remember fewer passwords is clearly a very good thing.

More newspapers, if not all of them, should follow the Telegraph's lead for a lot of reasons. Newspaper registration systems do not accomplish all that they were heralded as bringing: personalization, demographic information for advertisers, marketing information, etc.

On our own site, HeraldTribune.com registration is present in most sections but many of our vendors require their own logins and do not authenticate against our database. That means users have to remember several logins and passwords just to use one site. Instead, newspaper sites should use OpenID and require that all of their vendors do the same.

Remember that common registration is not only convenient for users and easier to manage for sites, but it's also the foundation for new ideas to come. Start thinking about how it could benefit your site in yet unimagined ways.