Where are the customers

Identity Woman asks "Where are the customers"... well, i can say for certain that there have been circles of trust formed in 2004, some quite large. having been there, i can say this stuff does not come easily. And it's not the technology. Marc recently wrote about this here saying

The legal complexities of this style of federation are significant, and they must all be considered.

Absolutely, and the bigger the radius, the greater the degree of complexity (and the number of lawyers... there's a joke in there somewhere...).

So while perhaps AOL's circle and a few others that have formed are not awe inspiring (yet). I think given that these standards are not yet even three years young, they've gone a long way fast. But look at the commercial software support. So, pulling out my old (dusty) IT Architect calculator with integrated time sink-hole estimator:

[Spec release] + [CoTs development]*2 +
([Corp Sponsorship]^2 + [IT planning] + [IT development] +
[marketing something-or-other]/[very small number less than 1] + [role-out])*2
= [something north of 3 years]

So perhaps the early movers have done so... i'd venture 2005 we'll see some more interesting Circles take shape.