
How much is Facebook Connect limiting Quora's growth? - martian
http://www.quora.com/How-much-is-Facebook-Connect-limiting-Quoras-growth
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finiteloop
This is Bret Taylor, CTO of Facebook.

The goal of Facebook for login is to improve signup conversion rates for your
sites and make it easier for users (so they don't need to re-enter all the
same information and re-find their friends on every site they use). This
thread is really interesting for me and the rest of the Platform team at
Facebook because it illustrates how far we have to go. Please keep the
feedback coming, however harsh :)

I get the brand perception and trust issues - it is something we care a lot
about and are actively working on.

Beyond that issue, we have internally been talking a lot about ways of making
the user experience smoother, more familiar, and less intimidating. If all of
you running startups have practical suggestions about how the experience of a
user using Facebook for login could be improved to help out your site, we
would be really eager to hear it. It is a great time to get the feedback, as
we are actively iterating on ideas internally.

~~~
jpeterson
I have a major idealogical problem with this recent trend of sites using
Facebook connect. Don't take this the wrong way, but Facebook is a toy. People
use it to share party pictures and play Farmville. I would just as soon trust
a circus clown to be the central authority on my identity as you guys.

And when I visited a site for the first time to see my Facebook contacts
there, without ever having signed up for the site in the first place, I got
angry. Really, really angry. And then I got even angrier when I went through
the 30 step process of turning off this "feature".

I don't know how representative I am of the population at large, but this
stuff drives me nuts. Please stop.

~~~
devin
Yeah I find it pretty unnerving as well.

Two opposing viewpoints on my mind:

1.) Facebook is for all practical purposes, fairly ubiquitous. +1 for Facebook
Connect on that front.

2.) As you suggest, Facebook is a toy and has no place providing this kind of
service. -1 for Facebook Connect.

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zalew
Facebook Connect is a good feature, but has one big disadvantage: does not
describe the interaction in a comprehensive way. I often connect and come up
with the screen 'let publish on your wall' and, well, what does it really
mean? That you'll post my every single action on fb? Some specific actions? A
summary once per day? Will my wall get spammed? Should I trust you?

I don't like when things get complicated too much and that simple approach
seems ok, but on the other hand, it lacks detail that would make users feel
safe about using fbc. If 'publish on your wall' had specified settings for the
webservices, it'd be much more effective.

~~~
tectonic
Agree 100%! This is the main reason that I don't use Facebook Connect - I have
no idea what a site will try to do in my name, nor do I have an intuitive
understanding of what Facebook will let a site do in my name.

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jseliger
The funny thing is that I was going to leave this answer: "And your categories
aren't mutually exclusive: I fall into all three of them and would never use a
service that requires Facebook connect," but when I hit "post" (or whatever),
a login screen came up with a big "Facebook Connect" logo, and I shut it down.

Maybe the login screen is part of the problem: I might've posted anyway if it
had four fields: "User name" "email" "password" and "retype password." As it
is, signing up sounds too invasive or too tedious to bother for a short
comment.

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SkyMarshal
What happens if you've created your account on lots of websites using Facebook
Connect, and then one day you decide to completely delete your Facebook
account?

I don't mean created a unique account on the site then linked your FBC (and
Twitter, etc) to it, I mean actually created the account by registering on the
site through FBC.

Do you lose all your accounts on the other websites too, or do they somehow
remain even though you didn't create a unique userid, pwd, email for the
account on those sites?

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finiteloop
It depends on the site.

If you run a site that uses Facebook for login, when you log someone in via
Facebook, you can ask for their email address via the "email" extended
permission. Your site can then support a password reset page (like most sites
already do) to enable those users to create a password via email if they
decide to delete their Facebook account. Requesting email address is a good
"escape valve" for users if you are concerned about this aspect of Facebook
login.

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simonw
Have Facebook fixed the problem where people can't log in to your site using
Facebook Connect if they don't have JavaScript enabled? I find that enormously
frustrating - no other feature on my sites require JavaScript (though I use
lots of JavaScript for usability enhancements), so adding it as a requirement
for logging in really annoys me.

~~~
finiteloop
Yes, we now are based on OAuth 2.0. See
<http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/>. You can just do a
redirect to log someone into your site.

~~~
simonw
That's fantastic news, thanks!

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ThomPete
I have to say I am a bit surprised that so many people seem to be upset about
the Facebook signup.

Personally I love the fact that I can use FB, as I dont' really care that much
about my facebook account.

Anyone got any theories on why that is?

~~~
tomjen3
I can't be the only one who doesn't have a facebook account, because I believe
that Facebook is a (potential for) waste of time on a massive scale.

I do have a twitter account, but honestly I don't want to use it to sign-up at
other pages. If you don't want to handle user names and passwords, use openid.

~~~
ThomPete
Openid is a mess. I really want to like it but it's simply too confusing IMHO.

~~~
andrewtj
Can you expand on what you find confusing about OpenID?

I ask as I like OpenID enough that at least for my services alpha, I'm only
implementing OpenID.

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robryan
Doesn't surprise me that Twitter is very popular at the moment, I think when
the site branches out a picks up more users outside of the tech/ startup crowd
then that will shift more back to facebook. Anecdotally from what I've seen,
not many people I know use Twitter but most of everyone I have met in
tech/startups do.

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petercooper
I don't even have a Facebook account yet I'm using Quora.. so surely they have
another way to sign up.

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far33d
Facebook connect is essential to the overall utility of quora.

It isn't he same without identity.

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eik3
How can I sign up with Quora? I don't have a facebook or twitter account.

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wdewind
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