Facebook already has enough of my data inside its walled garden. It's not getting control of my logins to other services. Add another signup method and I'll give your site due consideration.
The Facebook Connect stopped me as well. Seeing as the entire Quora team previously worked at Facebook (http://www.quora.com/about/team), including Charlie Cheever who "led Facebook Connect and Facebook Platform" it seems unlikely that this unfortunate requirement will be dropped anytime soon.
While there are certainly people (especially on HN) who are unwilling to give Facebook this kind of control, I don't think it will be a problem for the vast majority of users. In my opinion, the power of having an identity behind all of your users far outweighs the cost of the few who will not use Facebook Connect.
I'm not sure this is a reliable way to get an identity behind all of your users. It was reliable back when Facebook required .edu email addresses, but these days there are huge numbers of fake profiles, and it's easy to create a throwaway profile if you need one to sign up for a site.
We have our own login system. We just use Facebook to connect you to people you know and get your photo. Having real identities for people and having people connected to other people who know them are important for the system to work, and we found that the best way to get those things was to require Facebook to sign up.
Your service sounds awfully lot like Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange, which seems to work just fine without the need to "verify" users or require users to login via Facebook. Why does your service need it? Also, I have no desire for a site (yours or otherwise) to take my picture and friend list from Facebook, and it's a little presumptuous for Quora to require me to provide this information.
But I too am a bit iffy about the FB login. Mainly cos I feel it might post stuff to my wall. I am sure you guys don't do that. But I wanted to put it out there since that might be a concern other people might have as well.
Yeah. We don't post anything to any service right now, and we'll never do that except when you want it to happen, but I think you're right that people are worried about that since there are so many apps that do that kind of stuff.
This is a valid concern. I'm not too keen on connecting my Facebook account to things either. This may be an incredibly cool product...but I wouldn't know. I'm not clicking that blue button to find out.
To follow up with some potentially helpful feedback: Why not allow people to create "regular" accounts, and then they can associate their Facebook account with the account later? I'm not opposed to associating my Facebook account with services I value (for example, I connected to Flippa) -- I just don't want to do it upfront.
Comments
No.
Facebook already has enough of my data inside its walled garden. It's not getting control of my logins to other services. Add another signup method and I'll give your site due consideration.
The Facebook Connect stopped me as well. Seeing as the entire Quora team previously worked at Facebook (http://www.quora.com/about/team), including Charlie Cheever who "led Facebook Connect and Facebook Platform" it seems unlikely that this unfortunate requirement will be dropped anytime soon.
While there are certainly people (especially on HN) who are unwilling to give Facebook this kind of control, I don't think it will be a problem for the vast majority of users. In my opinion, the power of having an identity behind all of your users far outweighs the cost of the few who will not use Facebook Connect.
I'm not sure this is a reliable way to get an identity behind all of your users. It was reliable back when Facebook required .edu email addresses, but these days there are huge numbers of fake profiles, and it's easy to create a throwaway profile if you need one to sign up for a site.
I have 5 or so fake Facebook profiles I use for expressly this purpose.
It's true that this doesn't guarantee anything but it does help set the norms for how the site should work.
All the sites offering only 'sign up with facebook' just make me feel left out. Because I deleted my facebook.
Just adding the data point that Facebook Connect stopped me too. I'm touchy about associating apps with my Facebook account. Oh well!
We have our own login system. We just use Facebook to connect you to people you know and get your photo. Having real identities for people and having people connected to other people who know them are important for the system to work, and we found that the best way to get those things was to require Facebook to sign up.
We might add other ways to sign up later.
Your service sounds awfully lot like Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange, which seems to work just fine without the need to "verify" users or require users to login via Facebook. Why does your service need it? Also, I have no desire for a site (yours or otherwise) to take my picture and friend list from Facebook, and it's a little presumptuous for Quora to require me to provide this information.
Also, what's the main diff between this and Stack Exchange other than that this is all-purpose? Are you gonna let search engines index answers?
I tried it and liked it. Great job!
But I too am a bit iffy about the FB login. Mainly cos I feel it might post stuff to my wall. I am sure you guys don't do that. But I wanted to put it out there since that might be a concern other people might have as well.
Yeah. We don't post anything to any service right now, and we'll never do that except when you want it to happen, but I think you're right that people are worried about that since there are so many apps that do that kind of stuff.
This is a valid concern. I'm not too keen on connecting my Facebook account to things either. This may be an incredibly cool product...but I wouldn't know. I'm not clicking that blue button to find out.
To follow up with some potentially helpful feedback: Why not allow people to create "regular" accounts, and then they can associate their Facebook account with the account later? I'm not opposed to associating my Facebook account with services I value (for example, I connected to Flippa) -- I just don't want to do it upfront.