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Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It

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Re: Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It

#71

Post by ebf »

thwarted wrote: post #68
whalesalad wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no no. What the hell is anyone going to do on charmin.com??? Download a guide on how to wipe your ass? How often will you go there? Once? Never? Exactly. Facebook on the other hand... It's fresh and new. When people go there, they like it and then they're essentially subscribed. As many others have said, they have 300k likes. That means whenever they push something it shows up front and center on the first thing p…

What is Charmin going to put in their Facebook feed that has recurring value? New research on the best way to wipe your ass? I'll continue to get that from charmin.com, rather than risk a charmin app that posts to my wall that tells people I just learned how to wipe my ass.

It's a Facebook page, not an app, so they won't post things to your wall. It seems they have contests and media on their page, as well as coupons. Those things will show on 300,000 Facebook newsfeeds. I'd say it's better to drive traffic to their Facebook page rather than http://www.charmin.com/ .

Re: Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It

#72

Post by tsurantino »

One thing that has been really interested about the discussion of social logins has been the re-emerging critical outlook on online identity. I think that social logins are a double-edged sword, where they give us the ability to easily connect with sites for which our social identity is relevant or for which setting up a whole new custom identity is unnecessary. One the other hand, the obvious drawback is the implicit promotion of the social network as the de facto identity standard, which is dangerous and totalitarian (Facebook owns who you are, sort of).

I think the simple value for social login is context. There's an obvious overuse case and a useful use case.

Re: Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It

#73

Post by tsurantino »

robomartin wrote: post #50

There's another element of this that, to this day, I don't fully understand: Companies subverting their brands and actually promoting facebook. What do I mean by this? The other day we were watching TV and a Charmin ad comes in. At the end of the ad they actually say "go to facebook.com/charmin" What? They have a perfectly good and highly recognizable brand. And, they happen to have a great URL: charmin.com. Why send…

I think this is really a consequence of the effect that Facebook is having on the web.

Facebook is a looming spectre of sorts. Normally, we would use a web browser/computer to view the web and network, but Facebook has such a broad mission and reach that now brands reduce their exposure to Facebook pages. Facebook has such a broad and commercially internalized reach (so many people know about Facebook now) that for the consumer, it's just easier. To a certain degree, the concept of a "website" is disappearing. This may be extreme though.

Re: Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It

#74

Post by calbear81 »

thwarted wrote: post #68
whalesalad wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no no. What the hell is anyone going to do on charmin.com??? Download a guide on how to wipe your ass? How often will you go there? Once? Never? Exactly. Facebook on the other hand... It's fresh and new. When people go there, they like it and then they're essentially subscribed. As many others have said, they have 300k likes. That means whenever they push something it shows up front and center on the first thing p…

What is Charmin going to put in their Facebook feed that has recurring value? New research on the best way to wipe your ass? I'll continue to get that from charmin.com, rather than risk a charmin app that posts to my wall that tells people I just learned how to wipe my ass.

Coupons and offers which are built into Facebook now. "calbear81 just claimed an offer for $10 off 24 pack of Ultra Soft Charmin toilet paper".

Re: Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It

#75

Post by snowwrestler »

robomartin wrote: post #50

There's another element of this that, to this day, I don't fully understand: Companies subverting their brands and actually promoting facebook. What do I mean by this? The other day we were watching TV and a Charmin ad comes in. At the end of the ad they actually say "go to facebook.com/charmin" What? They have a perfectly good and highly recognizable brand. And, they happen to have a great URL: charmin.com. Why send…

Pushing people to Facebook does not subvert the Charmin brand because Charmin's product is not a website. Now if LinkedIn pushed people to "go to facebook.com/linkedin", that would subvert LinkedIn's brand. Which is of course why LinkedIn does not do that.

Re: Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It

#76

Post by steeleduncan »

The problem isn't that social login buttons harm your brand or look ugly, it is that by using social logins you are working to expand the social networks user base and not your own.

Online companies are largely valued by the size of their userbase and by working to build Fb or twitter's userbase rather than your own, you are sacrificing the value you add to your own company for the sake of the social network that a user signs in with.

Re: Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It

#78

Post by mkjones »

So I like a lot of the analysis in this article, but couldn't help taking issue with some of it. Here are some thoughts that came to mind. Worth noting that I work on security / spam fighting at Facebook, but these are solely my personal opinions.

"Social login buttons put security in someone else’s hands" You're damn right they do! I argue that in 99.9% of cases that's a great thing, for 3 reasons:

1. Facebook invests significant resources in both keeping bad guys out (we have been able to dramatically reduce large-scale phishing with a number of updates to our login security systems) and ensuring everyone else can get into their accounts easily. I can only speak for us, but I assume Twitter spends a lot of time on this as well. I imagine it'd be tough for a startup to keep up with the 10-20 people we have working on this problem at any given time.

2. It's incredibly difficult to build a password system that is both easy to use and secure. There's an almost endless ever changing list to make sure you're hashing and salting properly, don't have SQL injection flaws, implement robust rate-limiting without allowing DoS, etc. We've all seen many people screw it up in recent years. One of the largest benefits of Facebook Connect for startups is the ability to leverage our investment in these systems, without having to invest the significant time we have spent iterating on them.

3. We've spent a lot of time working on every aspect of login, so that startups don't have to. Your job is to build whatever technology differentiates you from your competitors, and make it worlds better than theirs. Any time you spend pfutzing with password hashing, building a better password recovery flow, or arguing about how to fail when people type in the wrong password is time you could better spend making a truly wonderful product. Unless you're trying to build a startup that helps people login, any time spent on this is better spent elsewhere.

Re: Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It

#79

Post by [deleted] »

ebf wrote: post #71
thwarted wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Charmin going to put in their Facebook feed that has recurring value? New research on the best way to wipe your ass? I'll continue to get that from charmin.com, rather than risk a charmin app that posts to my wall that tells people I just learned how to wipe my ass.

It's a Facebook page, not an app, so they won't post things to your wall. It seems they have contests and media on their page, as well as coupons. Those things will show on 300,000 Facebook newsfeeds. I'd say it's better to drive traffic to their Facebook page rather than http://www.charmin.com/ .

[deleted]

Re: Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It

#80

Post by steelaz »

mkjones wrote: post #78

So I like a lot of the analysis in this article, but couldn't help taking issue with some of it. Here are some thoughts that came to mind. Worth noting that I work on security / spam fighting at Facebook, but these are solely my personal opinions. "Social login buttons put security in someone else’s hands" You're damn right they do! I argue that in 99.9% of cases that's a great thing, for 3 reasons: 1. Facebook inves…

Most websites that are adding social login buttons also keep their own registration/authentication setup. I think by adding social login buttons you also increase attack surface on your website, no matter how good third party security is.
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