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Surprise: People hate being forced to use Facebook

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Re: Surprise: People hate being forced to use Facebook

#21
post #13

Facebook has done a great job of ruining their app ecosystem. Many users are trained through embarrassing spam incidents to never trust Facebook apps.

Is there even an option for developers to use where you can use Facebook just for login, without requesting any additional permissions? That would be acceptable.

This is why I still like OpenID (eg, log in with your Google account). I know they get nothing but my name and email address, they can't touch my account at all, and nothing is public.

Re: Surprise: People hate being forced to use Facebook

#22
Whenever I used to demo one of my old projects, the immediate feedback I'd get from most "advisors" was something along the lines of, "oh, you don't offer Facebook signup. Why not?"

I think the underlying assumption was that using Facebook login would make it easier to make the site "go viral" because we could more easily spam our user's networks.

I always cringed at this idea from my own personal experience, and from anecdotal evidence from my friends.

I'm very excited that someone finally backed this up with data.

Re: Surprise: People hate being forced to use Facebook

#23
post #17
post #9

Unfortunately some companies are in bed with Facebook and it seems it gives them more than the additional users. For example Spotify - still allows only Facebook signups. The first quote on signup page is of course >. I'm definitely one who spent additional time to look for an alternative. Edit: As parbo noticed, they actually do allow email+password signups again. I completely missed the link when checking.

Actually, it is now possible to sign up with only email. Not sure if it applies to all markets, but in the US you can.

Wow, they don't want people to spot that, do they :) I went to the signup page to verify before I posted my comment and completely missed the link, even though I was looking for it. I really appreciate them doing that - will check out their library today.

Edit: Or not. They seem to know my city better than me since my postcode is both required and invalid...

Re: Surprise: People hate being forced to use Facebook

#24
Not all "people" are your customers. The study lends nicely to customer segmentation. Tech-savvy customers are comfortable using it.

If you can accurately define who your customer is then you can tailor your user experience to fit them best.

Studies show the people that use Facebook Connect have a higher LTV and show higher engagement.

Re: Surprise: People hate being forced to use Facebook

#25
post #21
post #13

Facebook has done a great job of ruining their app ecosystem. Many users are trained through embarrassing spam incidents to never trust Facebook apps.

Is there even an option for developers to use where you can use Facebook just for login, without requesting any additional permissions? That would be acceptable. This is why I still like OpenID (eg, log in with your Google account). I know they get nothing but my name and email address, they can't touch my account at all, and nothing is public.

OAuth scopes kick ass. You don't even need to give up name or email to an application with Google's implementation, IIRC.

Re: Surprise: People hate being forced to use Facebook

#26
post #13

Facebook has done a great job of ruining their app ecosystem. Many users are trained through embarrassing spam incidents to never trust Facebook apps.

Totally agree. They really should have made the default to allow zero permissions. Then there could be a page in the app (or in facebook) where you can explicitly allow each requested permission once you've at least had a moment with the app. As it stands now, though, I never use the facebook option. The few times I did before, I raced to my profile to see if anything was posted. The current model is sort of like a store clerk saying, "Come on in... and let me use your phone to call some of your friends."

Re: Surprise: People hate being forced to use Facebook

#27
post #24

Not all "people" are your customers. The study lends nicely to customer segmentation. Tech-savvy customers are comfortable using it. If you can accurately define who your customer is then you can tailor your user experience to fit them best. Studies show the people that use Facebook Connect have a higher LTV and show higher engagement.

Do you have any links to these studies?

We're building a site that relies on network effects and are considering offering only Facebook authentication, with perhaps other signups available in the future. Anyone have any good case studies on startups that went this route?

Re: Surprise: People hate being forced to use Facebook

#28
post #7

If you're adding user accounts, there's really no excuse not to include an email & password signup option. You can alienate a lot of potential users if you require Facebook connect and don't give the option.

Also, you're allowing yourself to become exclusively dependent on another company's platform.

I've always wondered why more websites/apps didn't have their own user database, with Facebook credentials as merely a link to an underlying record that the website actually owns.

This way if you one day want to run far, far away from the FB monster you're already set - the behavior of your app doesn't break horrifically, and you can devise a seamless/pain-free transition for FB-authenticated users to create a password.

Re: Surprise: People hate being forced to use Facebook

#30
post #4

Given the overwhelming sample size of 37, I think we can all agree that this is statistically significant information which one should base big platform decisions on.

If people were indifferent (50% chance of wanting facebook) then the likelihood of at least 27 out of 37 randomly asked people saying "no facebook" is about 1 in 300. And that's counting the "Yes but I hate it"s as yesses. Count those as "no" and it's 1 in 3000. Highly significant.

This assumes the "random tourists in Pike's Place market" are an effectively random sample. It's possible that facebook fans are less likely to take vacations in Seattle, but Occam's razor is against it.

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