One of our classmates’, Tim Hodgkins’, comment on my first blog post
have triggered me to write this post. In his comment, Tim has mentioned that by
using one online profile you can not only use it within one social media, but
also use it to sign up for different applications and software. I have agreed
with his point, but by that time I wasn't quite focused on it. Recently,
however, throughout my development in the area of social media, thanks to our
module, I have realized the true power of any single social media. To make it
completely clear for a reader, I’m speaking about the moment when you have
accessed a website or an app and they ask you to Sign Up OR, which is more
important, to Log In using your current social network details, e.g. Facebook,
Google+, Twitter. Just for the sake of curiosity, I have decided to search for
this kind of applications that allow Log In via social media profile and as my
bases I have focused mostly on Facebook. My choice is not surprising as 51% of
sites and apps prefer Facebook as a social login (Picture and Reference are provided
below).
The results were just unbelievable as there were more than 2 million
results for the search request “Sign Up or Login via Facebook”. After the fifth
page of search results my tabs in the browser were full of examples and I've
decided to stop as it started to get meaningless. Here are the most popular (in
my opinion) examples of the websites and app that allow a Facebook Login as a
Sign Up:
- Instagram (http://instagram.com/) – obviously, as it is part of the Facebook it is not a surprise that it allows Sign Up via Facebook.
- Netflix (https://www.netflix.com/Login?locale=en-GB) – A huge American Internet on-demand provider with millions of subscribers.
- Prezi (https://prezi.com/) – A very powerful online and desktop presentation creation tool. There is nothing to be compared with normal PowerPoint slides. This is just a whole new level.
- Spotify (https://www.spotify.com/uk/login/) – a commercial music streaming service which has direct interaction with record labels, such as Sony.
- Yahoo(https://help.yahoo.com/kb/groups/sign-facebook-google-account-sln2077.html?impressions=true) – Sounds weird, but yes, you can log in to Yahoo using your Facebook or Google account.
- About.me (https://about.me/login) – Another social network which I have discovered. Gathers in itself all possible social networks related to one person.
- Stackoverflow (https://stackoverflow.com/users/signup) – Not everyone might know, but the StackOverFlow website is the second home for any kind of developer (programmer) in the world. Whenever a developer has an issue, he/she doesn't go to YouTube, Google or Books, they go to stackoverflow.com.
- Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/log_in) – Another quite famous video-sharing website, which has quite a lot of similarities with the YouTube.
- Slideshare (https://www.slideshare.net/login) – As it can be understood from its name, it is a slide sharing website, which contains in itself public slides that are uploaded all around the world.
- Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/login/) – “is a visual discovery tool that people use to collect ideas for their different projects and interests” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinterest). Even Wikipedia gives a better explanation than I do.
And these are just a drop in the ocean of the websites and apps that
allow this kind of Sign Ups. However, it is time to state that there are two
sides of this kind of online facilities. On one side, you are saving tons of
your personal time on everyday Sign Up pages, which are annoying. However, on
the other side, you allow a complete access to your profile to the app. They have
not only the access to your profile, but even the permission to post news on your
behalf. The limit till which you consider to allow this kind of things is up to
a user, and only he/she can decide on it. Every person has his/her level of
privacy. Personally, I use my fake online Facebook profile, just in case J.
