What are the pros (and cons) of using “Sign in with Twitter/Facebook” for a new website?
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Paul D. Waite
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Published on 2011-02-10T21:32:05Z
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2011/03/07
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Myself and a friend are looking to launch a little forum site. I’m considering using the “Sign in with Facebook/Twitter” APIs, possibly exclusively (a la e.g. Lanyrd), for user login. I haven’t used either of these before, nor run a site with user logins at all.
What are the pros (and cons) of these APIs? Specifically:
What benefits do I get as a developer from using them? What drawbacks are there?
Do end users actually like/dislike them?
Have you experienced any technical/logistical issues with these APIs specifically?
Here are the pros and cons I’ve got so far:
Pros
- More convenient for the user (“register” with two clicks, sign in with one)
- Possibly no need to maintain our own login system
Cons
- No control over our login process
- Exclude Facebook/Twitter users who are worried about us having some sort of access to their accounts
- Users’ accounts on our site are compromised if their Facebook/Twitter accounts are compromised.
- And if we don’t maintain our own alternative login system:
- Dependency on Facebook/Twitter for our login system
- Exclude non-Facebook/non-Twitter users from our site
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