For this to be adopted, you need to have at least one major email provider implementing it, at least one major browser, and at least one major website. If you don't have the three corners of the triangle, people will inevitably judge Persona by its fallback implementation and will fail to understand the advantages Persona offers.
The good news is Mozilla have managed to implement a bridge that makes it look like one major email provider, Yahoo!, implements it.
Now you need the other two corners. Firefox OS is not mainstream enough, why doesn't Firefox for the desktop implement this natively yet? Isn't the whole of Mozilla behind this initiative? (Also, why haven't they fully retired the old usage of the brand Mozilla Persona yet?)
Very good points, and we agree. We're going to bridge more Identity Providers. We're working on native implementations (though I suspect that those are less pressing than the other two angles.)
As for big web sites... we've got some things in the works. But that's where you and others on HN can help. If you like Persona, if you like the vision we have, then help us. Pick one site where you can implement it. Ditch social login, which users hate, and pick Persona instead.
As cliche as it might sound, I think I have to say this: Be the change you want to see in the Web. Help us make Persona, the one login system that respects users, truly successful.
Browser integration is actually supposed to be one of the core pieces of Persona. The idea is that by building the Persona login process directly into the browser (as opposed to it requiring a popup/webpage) then phishing attacks may be somewhat mitigated.
Also, it's more private. With a native browser implementation, you don't communicate with persona.org every time you log in to a website, you only have to trust your browser to store your cached authentication credential.
The good news is Mozilla have managed to implement a bridge that makes it look like one major email provider, Yahoo!, implements it.
Now you need the other two corners. Firefox OS is not mainstream enough, why doesn't Firefox for the desktop implement this natively yet? Isn't the whole of Mozilla behind this initiative? (Also, why haven't they fully retired the old usage of the brand Mozilla Persona yet?)