>>2
OpenID. I didn't even realize you could correllate the two. But yeah, I guess they do have the same purpose, except OpenID is meant to be a universal login, whereas for tripcodes that purpose is secondary (although 2ch2 used to have a tripcode-based PM system).

And yeah, Web 2.0 promotes people saying stupid crap just so that they get noticed in the blogosewer. Hell, I'm Shii and I do that on Digg.