

Social Login and Social Plugins Increase Page Views, Time Spent On Site - xoail
http://blog.gigya.com/social-login-and-social-plugins-increase-page-views-time-spent-on-site/

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aidos
I think that social vs non social logins probably segments your users into 2
different types of people. I consider myself to be a very savy Internet user -
I don't trust social login. I don't think any good can come from connecting my
accounts like that and I know that some site is going to do something
inappropriate on my behalf. As users become more savy (read: cynical) I think
you'll find the develop the same view point.

Additionally we found on our site that social login increased conversions for
signups but those people are generally of lower value to our freemium product
in the long run because they're less likely to want to pay.

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CaptainZapp
I second the "absolutely not" view.

In fact I "deleted" my Facebook existence and if you want to force me into a
social login, any social login, you just lost me.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

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triplesec
a. This is a plug: these guys have a stake in this kind of "social" This is no
proof, no comprehensive data but just pretty charts.

b. _post hoc ergo propter hoc_ fallacy committed

c. I trust Mozilla more <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408735>

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rbkillea
As a user, I can say that I _do not_ like social login. Also, page views is
meaningless as is number of mins spent on your site.

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jdmitch
It seems like a false dichotomy to say that users either like or don't like
social login - in my own thought process it completely depends on the site and
the social login offerings available. I am often annoyed at sites which
essentially block content if you don't sign in socially (f6s.com for example),
but I am quite happy to avoid the hassle of creating a new username and
password if 1) I don't really care about the site I'm visiting or 2) if I can
sign in with a social identity which doesn't compromise what I am getting out
of the site. I have several different twitter accounts for various projects
and interests, so I might sometimes just use one of those that isn't my
personal account to take a few steps out of a login process. The fact that the
OP (gigya) allows dozens of social network login options (arguably too many ;)
allows easy social login with secondary accounts.

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pbnjay
This is dumb. Show me pageviews and I'll show you a lot more "non-social
login" people. I bet there are just as many (if not more) people spending the
same amount of time on site as those logged in via social accounts. You've
just got millions of bounces and quick looks bringing down the average for
non-social.

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olympus
I think the real answer is that users like choices and freedom. You will gain
the maximum amount of users if you allow them to use social logins if they so
desire, or allow them to create a stand alone username/password for your site.
By doing it this way you don't lose the users who rebel at social logins, but
you still retain the users who prefer social login. The concept of "why not
both?" isn't that hard to grasp. I understand that implementing/linking
accounts from numerous social logins as well stand alone accounts is more
difficult for the developer, but that's the price of maximum growth.

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ajtaylor
We're working on bringing more social experiences to my employer's website,
but the 3rd party interactions will eventually be only for the social login.
Commenting, reviews, etc are all going to be done in-house this year, moving
away from Gigya's tools. Their moderation tools are... subpar. And we need to
have the comments locally anyway since we want to include them in the page's
HTML for SEO purposes. Social login providers like Gigya certainly have their
place - who wants to keep up with the constant stream of changes to FB,
twitter, etc login APIs - but so many of them want to be the primary data
source. This data is going to be the core of the platform going forward, so
it's super important to own it all IMHO.

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Cynddl
The article is a little biased. Indeed, users who use social login spend more
time on their website. It doesn't involve a causal link between time on
website and social login: perhaps users are not the same, with different
habits of navigation.

And users who use social login will perhaps spend more time if it's not
provided.

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inlined
Interesting, but I would be more interested in causal relationships (I.e.
growth rate or engagement delta). I think it's quite possible that social
merely segments users by their already existing commitment levels: anonymous
users have no commitment, social users want to make their commitment painless.

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edgarvaldes
People doesn't like to create new accounts to login. That´s all.

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Executor
The "social login" defeats the idea of net neutrality. It limits your privacy
and gives corporations more power over your accounts. Not really my cup of
tea.

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xoail
When we implemented social login into our app. It did boost our conversions.
Retention is another story but at least one goal is met right after.

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jcomis
No they don't. I've run a ton of usability tests for clients walking through
this very issue. Almost no one will even consider using it.

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farinasa
Not this user.

~~~
PleasePlease
They work for us so far for users' engagement to register. 96% of registration
done through social APIs.

~~~
papsosouid
That is massively out of proportion with everyone else. I suggest you look
into what you broke on your normal registration process.

~~~
nasalgoat
It really depends on the application. For a casual use app, the social logins
are the smallest barrier to entry for the type of user they are targeted at.

Any "friction", like having to enter a username, email and password is three
more steps than a social login requires, costing these casual users.

So, I can believe it is highly effective for specific applications.

~~~
papsosouid
That's a lovely theory and all, but literally _nothing_ has a ratio of
social:real registration anywhere approaching 24:1. Those casual use apps you
are talking about get 70% social if they have really bad registration
processes. Under 50% if they have decent registration.

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martinced
Do not vote this up. The title submitted to HN is everything that is wrong
here.

