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Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

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Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#131

I'm a cofounder at CollegeAI.com. Our users can sign up via Facebook, Google or Email. Here are our stats: Google: 58% Email: 23% Facebook: 19% Most of our users are around 18yo.

I was curious and visited your site, thanks :)

I noticed that Facebook is listed as the first option with a graphic button, whereas e-mail is listed last with a text-only link. Despite this, e-mail has attracted more users than Facebook. It’s broadly a similar story for other posts here with stats listed.

In my view, this mostly negates the claims above that people who prefer to login with e-mail can be reasonably ignored.

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#132
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm sympathetic to your viewpoint and to a large degree share it, you are among a vanishingly small minority to not use a site or service just because of social login. 'jfaucett probably is fine sacrificing losing this small minority.

> 'jfaucett probably is fine sacrificing losing this small minority. precisely. In my experience, this small minority can actually be subdivided broadly into two groups: those with very high data privacy concerns and scammers/spammers. It turns out that in my experience, the high level data privacy concern people have been the vastly smaller of the two groups, so at the end of the day you are sacrificing a tiny fract…

One nuance is whether you offer one or multiple channels. I prefer email registration, but will consider Google or Microsoft logins. I will not under any circumstances use Facebook or Twitter login.

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#133
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email was the original social network (still left).

Nah, the PSTN was the original social network. And they even developed the first cloud app: voicemail.

Sorry, smoke signals were the first social network. Plus you couldn't even opt out of them.

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'jfaucett probably is fine sacrificing losing this small minority. precisely. In my experience, this small minority can actually be subdivided broadly into two groups: those with very high data privacy concerns and scammers/spammers. It turns out that in my experience, the high level data privacy concern people have been the vastly smaller of the two groups, so at the end of the day you are sacrificing a tiny fract…

One nuance is whether you offer one or multiple channels. I prefer email registration, but will consider Google or Microsoft logins. I will not under any circumstances use Facebook or Twitter login.

I find myself doing the same thing. There is absolutely zero hope of me clicking "login with Facebook", and between my low likelihood of clicking, and the low likelihood of actually seeing "login with Twitter" - that also never happens.

However, I login with Google all the time.

I have my reasons for these choices and I'm sure many people here share those reasons, and I'm also sure many more don't share those reasons, but the reasons are not important in this discussion.

If you're going to offer social login, then offer at the very least all the major social logins - some really are more acceptable than others, the problem is, everyone's set is different.

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#135

For a while I used it almost exclusively until I realized how much I was fucking my users over just because I was to lazy to properly implement a password system (still do not store them myself) besides the already huge power these corporations hold you make it very hard for users to delete their account with them by letting GlobalCorp™ hold their other accounts hostage.

It’s funny how back when sites like StackOverflow were starting up, “social” logins like OpenID and, later, OpenID Connect were going to replace passwords. Now it’s “just use a password manager”.

Of the two, I strongly prefer a federated login system like OpenID that lets the user pick an identity provider

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#136
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was OpenID, which lets you choose your third-party provider at will, or even self-host. It's mostly dead now. People wanted the convenience of FB/GOOG/TWIT over the freedom of self-hosting.

But everybody just uses some library for that stuff, I wonder why there aren't visible "Log In with [list of 80 OpenAuth providers]" sites or services.

The issue is UX: I’d much prefer a widget that had three or four common providers and then an advanced mode that lets me pick an alternative

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email's older than voice mail.

Fair enough, though I wouldn't call it a "cloud" application until webmail became prominent in the late 90s.

Why? You'd log in to servers that were more or less permanently on and connected to public internet in order to access email for the length of it's existence.

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'jfaucett probably is fine sacrificing losing this small minority. precisely. In my experience, this small minority can actually be subdivided broadly into two groups: those with very high data privacy concerns and scammers/spammers. It turns out that in my experience, the high level data privacy concern people have been the vastly smaller of the two groups, so at the end of the day you are sacrificing a tiny fract…

One nuance is whether you offer one or multiple channels. I prefer email registration, but will consider Google or Microsoft logins. I will not under any circumstances use Facebook or Twitter login.

I'm the same, if email registration isn't available I'll first greatly reconsider how much I'm interested in what you're offering.

If I'm VERY interested I'll consider google or github or something, no matter how interested I am I'll never use facebook or twitter etc.

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#139

All my side projects and any projects I control use exclusively social login. Here's why. 1. Its way easier on me. I don't have to worry about password resets or users hacking an account in the site. OAuth and be done. 2. I don't have to deal with any outgoing or incoming emails and complaints dealing with login. 3. I don't have to worry about scammers, since google/facebook pretty much require phone, a non fake emai…

Is it really so hard for scammers / spammers to create fake Google / Facebook accounts? What is so hard about creating any number of "non fake emails"? I assume a non-fake email (address) is just one that can accept incoming messages.

Google requires a phone number nowadays. And you can't use the same phonenumber more than X times. (Not sure what X is but I hit it last week so had to go on the second phone)

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#140
post #96
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a different social login provider be more acceptable? Github for instance? Something or someone that isn't as interested in using your data

Github maybe... I've been more hesitant to use them, as they control a significant portion of open source project's infrastructure, and could generally make a lot of headaches for me. If you don't have a simple email-based signup I'm going to be hesitant to use your site.

What do you imagine GitHub..... doing?
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