Not referring to dating sites in particular, but the requirement of a Facebook sign-up for start-ups I think is a good idea. For everybody who says "I don't want to give you my details", I suspect their are 50 who will just be thankful for not having to give you an e-mail password and remember login details, get spam, etc. etc.
That's why I almost always look at a project as allowing Facebook sign-up first, then e-mail/twitter/google/linkedin, etc. etc.
1. Do you mind that your users may get locked out of your product for violating Facebook's real name or one-account-only policies?
2. Do you really want to phone home to a publicly-traded advertising company every time someone logs into your site?
3. Social auth asks users to make a significant trust decision before they can even begin to engage with your product. Are you OK with that friction?
Passwords are a pain in the ass, but there are alternatives without the downsides and centralization of social auth. I personally work on Mozilla Persona (https://persona.org), and I'm more than happy to personally help out anyone interested in exploring it for their project. My contact info is in my profile.
Comments
Not referring to dating sites in particular, but the requirement of a Facebook sign-up for start-ups I think is a good idea. For everybody who says "I don't want to give you my details", I suspect their are 50 who will just be thankful for not having to give you an e-mail password and remember login details, get spam, etc. etc.
That's why I almost always look at a project as allowing Facebook sign-up first, then e-mail/twitter/google/linkedin, etc. etc.
I'd respectfully disagree. User testing generally shows a pretty strong aversion to and misunderstanding of Facebook Connect. Here's one such study: http://www.guanotronic.com/~serge/papers/chi13a.pdf
More pragmatically:
1. Do you mind that your users may get locked out of your product for violating Facebook's real name or one-account-only policies?
2. Do you really want to phone home to a publicly-traded advertising company every time someone logs into your site?
3. Social auth asks users to make a significant trust decision before they can even begin to engage with your product. Are you OK with that friction?
Passwords are a pain in the ass, but there are alternatives without the downsides and centralization of social auth. I personally work on Mozilla Persona (https://persona.org), and I'm more than happy to personally help out anyone interested in exploring it for their project. My contact info is in my profile.