Yes, like I say it seems over-engineered for no benefit. For example, why go to all this effort to be "indie", only to end up with this sort of nonsense: http://microformats.org/wiki/web-sign-in

> Link from your personal site to your other profiles. Add rel="me" to those hyperlinks. E.g.:

> <a rel="me" href="http://twitter.com/your_twitter_alias">...

> When you use your personal site with web sign-in the first time, your browser will redirect you to to your online profile, e.g. Twitter

I can dig the markup, but all the user flows and use cases appear to devolve into an unofficial API for Twitter.