Mozilla has been working on a web identity system from last year, calling it BrowserID. BrowserID started as an easy way to sign into websites without registering at each and every website, similar to other login providers like Google and Facebook logins. BrowserID allows you to use single email address and password to login to sites which support the service.

BrowserID is commonly referred to both the technology and the service that implements the technology until now. To remove the confusion Mozilla is renaming the service as Persona while the technology name remains to be BrowserID.

Today we’d like to introduce Mozilla Persona, our new name for the complete Identity offering from Mozilla: a collection of components and experiences we’re designing to manage the whole of a user’s online identity with our core values of user control, safety, and convenience.

Mozilla says the “Persona name resonates with the idea of personhood as well as online identity as a facet of our lives, and therefore strongly tied to user identity.” The BrowserID is still in experimental phase and there are very few sites which accept registrations using BrowserID. Along with the name change Mozilla is planning some new features to the service including an identity dashboard, user data interconnect feature and more.

Adding to the confusion there is another service with a similar name called Personas for Firefox. Personas are light weight themes for Firefox, these allowed users to change the look of the Firefox. This name will be changed to something else which is not yet decided, to differentiate it from the new Mozilla Persona user identity system.

Via Mozilla