I think if you look at Kim Cameron's Laws of Identity, it's clear that the research team at MS has had it right for at least a decade, it's just that none of their ideas have made it into production.
Ballmer had both the plans and source code for an identity product that would have been 10x more advanced than Facebook, but they decided to axe the project so they could make the Zune instead.
http://www.identityblog.com/stories/2004/12/09/thelaws.html
Ballmer had both the plans and source code for an identity product that would have been 10x more advanced than Facebook, but they decided to axe the project so they could make the Zune instead.