What are the pros and cons of using “Sign in with Twitter/Facebook” for a new website?

Posted by Paul D. Waite on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Paul D. Waite
Published on 2011-02-10T21:32:05Z Indexed on 2011/02/10 23:33 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 469

Filed under:

user-interface

|

twitter

|

facebook

|

Identity

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, 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:

Is the idea of using them, and/or using them exclusively (i.e. having no login system other than one or both of these), any good? What benefits do I get as a developer from using them?
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 non-Facebook/non-Twitter users (if we don’t maintain our own login system)
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.

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about user-interface

Design For Asynchronous User Interface

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I have been working on a integration that has posed an interesting user interface conundrum that I would like suggestions for. The user interface is displayed within a third party product. The state of the interface is supplied by calls to a service I have written. There can be small delays between… >>> More
User Interface Annoyances

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I am looking for some of the most annoying user interface features that are common and keep being repeated. The first one that comes to mind is the modal pop up message box that developers like to use to let you know you did something right, but gets frustrating the 1000th time you have to close… >>> More
UI message passing programming paradigm

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I recently (about two months ago) read an article that explained some user interface paradigm that I can't remember the name of and I also can't find the article anymore. The paradigm allows for decoupling the user interface and backend through message passing (via some queueing implementation).… >>> More
How to Implement "Code Bubble" like User Interface?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
The new Code Bubble IDE has been in the news. I wonder if there are useful libraries to implement this kind of interface (for other applications)? I prefer java or python. I understand Code Bubble has been implemented on Eclipse. >>> More
Improving in the MonoDevelop user interface

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>Food For Monkeys:</b> "In the past weeks (actually, months) I've been doing some changes in the MonoDevelop GUI to make it more functional and better looking. Here is the result:" >>> More

Related posts about twitter

Generating a twitter OAuth access key - the semi-manual way

as seen on Hadermann.be - Search for 'Hadermann.be'
[UPDATE] Apparently someone at Twitter was listening, or I’m going senile/blind. Let’s call it a combination of both. Instead of following all the steps below, you could just login with the Twitter account you want to use on http://dev.twitter.com, register your application and then click… >>> More
shell_exec escaping quotes in php for Twitter API --> Getting CURL to work with obscure twitter api

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm using shell_exec() to execute a Twitter API Call. shell_exec('curl -u user:password -d "id=3191321" http://api.twitter.com/1/twitterapi/twitterlist/members.xml'); That works fine when I authenticate correctly and put in a number for the id. But when I try to put in a variable ($id), it screws… >>> More
How to get a Twitter user's handle from a phone number using Twitter API

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
If I have a phone number, and the owner of the number Has a Twitter account Associated his account with the phone number Can I use the Twitter API to find the account based on the phone number? UPDATE: What I basically need is a reverse lookup function from a phone number to a Twitter account… >>> More
La rubrique Qt sur Twitter, suivez l'actualité Qt depuis Twitter et partagez-la

as seen on Developper.com - Search for 'Developper.com'
Comme vous l'avez probablement remarqué, les réseaux sociaux explosent de partout, Developpez.com et toutes ses rubriques se doivent donc, comme toujours auparavant, de suivre l'évolution en s'ouvrant à ces réseaux sociaux. Vous pouvez donc désormais suivre l'actualité de la rubrique sur Facebook… >>> More
Twitter User/Search Feature Header Support in LINQ to Twitter

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
LINQ to Twitter’s goal is to support the entire Twitter API. So, if you see a new feature pop-up, it will be in-queue for inclusion. The same holds for the new X-Feature… response headers for User/Search requests. However, you don’t have to wait for a special property on the TwitterContext to access… >>> More