Essentially this will allow you to use your email as an online authentication method. Some the previously developed methods are open ID , Facebook connect and Google friend connect.

All of them share the same policy that they allow you to use an existing authentication (open id or Facebook / Google account) to identify yourself to a 3rd party website, with obvious advantage of you not have to go through the signup process yet again.

Webfinger is yet another of those online provider which essentially uses your existing email to your identity. But for this to work you would need to have a public google profile associated with your google account / email ID. For those who have public profile , the webfinger has been already automatically activated.

The name is a reference to a UNIX command which was used to find the details of a user’s email address.