Social sign on

Creating yet another user account is a source of friction to many visitors visiting a new site for the first time. Particularly if they need to transact, or to benefit from a service. As a result a number of big online brands like Google, Facebook and Twitter began to offer an ability to use your social credentials to sign up removing the need to create yet another online profile. The problem is, that these same services can then access your data to help them understand you, and your behaviour better. Is this a fair tradeoff for saving you some time registering on yet another site? For many it is not, and as a result it is likely that alternatives to big brand social sign on will emerge in the months and years to come.

The resources in this section will help keep readers abreast as to the latest developments in the social sign on space.

Key Recommendations

All Articles

Maximizing conversion rates using social sign-in

It’s quick and easy – in fact, if they’ve already signed in to the platform in question, it involves one, or at the most two, clicks. In itself, this isn’t a new idea. We’ve been signing up to sites with our Facebook details for a while now, and even before that, Windows Live / Microsoft ID sign-in was commonly used. Now these two have been joined by Twitter, and also LinkedIn, meaning that almost the entire online population has the option to use social sign-in if they choose to.

Social login buttons aren’t worth it (2012)

I stumbled across a very disturbing number in our analytics earlier this year. From April 12 to May 12, 2012, we had 340,591 failed login attempts. That’s the total number of times someone tried to get into MailChimp to get their work done and couldn’t remember their username and/or password, or simply mistyped.

Social sign-on : the implications for ecommerce sites

Social sign-on continues to evolve. The latest reports from social sign-in platforms Gigya and Janrain show that Facebook continues to dominate social sign-in but is plateauing, whilst Google plus is starting to pull out of its long-term downward trend. The other players maintain their smaller shares of the market.

Why you should think twice before using that social sign-in

NBR Clips The dark side of social media posts
Wednesday, 10 Aug 2016 | 6:00 AM ET | 02:26 Posting and sharing photos online seems innocuous, but you could be inadvertently leaking sensitive business and personal information, according to experts.

Know of a resource that helps people secure their data? Submit it today