Janrain » Michael Olson

Audience Segmentation: Everything You Wanted to Know, But Were Afraid to Ask

Michael Olson — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 21:43:34 +0000

Ask Paris Hilton what she thinks of big data, and she might tell you “that’s hot”. And she would be exactly right! Big data is hotter than ever. These days, marketers have all types of data about consumers available at their fingertips – things like demographics, interests, behaviors, transactions and so much more. What a glorious time to be drawing up data-driven digital campaigns to reach consumers, right?

But for many digital teams, it isn’t all unicorns and rainbows. Just last year, research from IAB and the Winterberry Group found that a shortage of data-savvy marketing talent and an insufficient data strategy were two of the top four factors inhibiting marketers’ ability to utilize consumer data.

If you are interested in learning about how you can harness the power of big data to better understand and market to your consumers, then I would like to invite you to join us for a webinar on Wednesday, June 19^th at 10:00 AM PDT – Become a Data Dynamo: Audience Segmentation Techniques that Drive ROI. As part of our educational series, we’re inviting along our partner Lotame to join us and discuss how marketers can build richer customer profiles and develop audience insights, integrate consumer data across channels, and create data-driven campaigns that resonate with consumers. I hope to see you there!

Janrain Now Supports Login with Amazon

Michael Olson — Thu, 30 May 2013 19:50:05 +0000

For more than a decade, Amazon has helped fuel eCommerce innovation while seeding the market for consumers to shop online. With more than 200 million customers today, people who use Amazon are active, engaged online shoppers. Now, thanks to our partnership with Amazon, these consumers can quickly register and log in to websites using their trusted Amazon identity.

Starting today, Janrain customers can easily add Login with Amazon to their website in minutes. Login with Amazon eliminates the need for consumers to remember yet another distinct username and password for each site frequently visited, and our own research indicates some of the uninspiring things people would rather do than think up new passwords.

Whether consumers are visiting websites to shop for products or interact with content, they will appreciate Amazon’s high level of security and trust using their Amazon identity for registration. For example, Zappos.com has found that 40% of new customers choose Login with Amazon when registering to check out and purchase on the site.

Try out Login with Amazon for yourself right now over at Bosch.

Login with Amazon is available for Janrain customers today. Simply log in to your Janrain product dashboard, configure an Amazon developer app, and drag the Login with Amazon button into your social login interface. It only takes a few minutes!

How To Cure Consumer Mistargeting

Michael Olson — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:38:42 +0000

As marketing practitioners in the digital age, we’re facing a stark reality – 98% of people receive information and offers that are simply not relevant from brands. This type of mistargeting has manifested itself in interesting and often humorous ways. Solve Media and HubSpot, for example, have facetiously pointed out that people are more likely to climb Mt. Everest than click on a display ad. Ouch!

That isn’t a statistic on which most digital marketers would like to hang their hat. Just for the sake of comparison, how long would an NFL kicker stick around if he missed 98% of his field goal attempts? How about an attorney who loses 98% of her or his cases? It doesn’t require an advanced degree to figure out that a physician who misdiagnoses patients 98% of the time will probably earn a one-way ticket to the Island of Misfit Doctors.

As marketers, we can and simply must do better. One common reason why brands miss the mark is because, often times, consumers visiting their website are anonymous. Some brands have set up sophisticated targeting methods based on a user’s IP address and website behavior, but that information will only get you so far. It doesn’t tell you who that visitor truly is, nor does it provide information such as a name, verified email, confirmed location, gender, date of birth, interests or hobbies.

Why Registered Users Are More Valuable Than Anonymous Site Visitors

It’s difficult to target potential customers without first understanding who they are. A person’s identity, as discovered online through a registration process, is the foundation for effective customer engagement. Just how valuable is a registered user on your site? Research tells us that registered users:

Spend 54% more time on site than anonymous visitors
View 4X more pages per visit to a site than anonymous visitors
Return to a site 9X more often than anonymous visitors
Remain customers 50% longer than anonymous visitors

How Social Login Improves Customer Acquisition

Now we know that registration is paramount for brands seeking to acquire users and customers online. But most site visitors remain averse to the process. Research shows that 86% of consumers may abandon a site when asked to register by filling out a traditional form from scratch. Why? None of us enjoy entering a bunch of redundant information about ourselves on a form. Nor do we delight in remembering yet another username and password combination for each website that we frequently visit.

Social login solves this challenge. It enables consumers to quickly and securely register and log in to sites using an existing identity from networks such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn, while eliminating the need to remember yet another site-specific password. And 77% of consumers prefer social login to traditional registration, making it a win-win both for digital marketers and consumers.

What benefits do companies experience after deploying social login on their websites? Read on for a sampling of results:

Social login triggers a 12% increase in shopping cart conversion rates
Social login leads to a 50% increase in website registration rates
Visitors who begin a registration process using social login are 2X more likely to complete the process than those who choose traditional registration methods

How User Profile Data Closes The Targeting Loop

If we assume that a lack of deep customer insight is the primary cause of mistargeting, then getting people to register and provide personal information is the cure. As evidenced, social login plays a large role in improving user acquisition. Now that you’re signing up new users and collecting user data, the question becomes – how do you utilize it to better market to your audience?

In an era characterized by short attentions spans and fierce competition for consumer mindshare, your marketing needs to reach the right customer at the right time with the right message. Developing a true understanding of an online consumer makes this possible.

Social login provides permission-based access to a rich set of demographics (age, gender, location, relationship status, political and religious views, etc.), declared interests and friends – in other words, the information that people maintain on their social profiles. Leveraging this profile data within your online marketing initiatives can dramatically improve results. Let’s take a look at a few example results:

Content Personalization and Product Recommendations

Personalized product recommendations lead to a 30% increase in purchase conversion rates and a 10% increase in average order value for a sporting goods retailer
- Shoppers who interact with personalized product recommendations are 4X more likely to make a purchase
Personalized product recommendations lead to a 79% increase in purchase conversion rates and a 25% increase in net revenue for an apparel retailer
Personalized content based on location demographics results in a 100% increase in conversion rate, a 100% increase in revenue and a 167% increase in new customer acquisition

Email Segmentation

Email segmentation based on demographics and interests leads to a 244% increase in email open rates, a 161% increase in email click through rates, and a 330% increase in revenue per mailing
Email database segmentation leads to an 80% increase in email open rates
Personalized eCommerce emails leads to a 30% increase in average order value
People who register via social login are 34% more likely to open email and 63% more likely to click through on an email

Targeting

Targeted advertisements secure 2.7X more revenue per ad than non-targeted ads
Targeted ads are twice as effective at generating conversions from clicks

Many digital marketers know that they can do a better job of micro-targeting consumers with content and offers that are more relevant. For a long time, their ability to effectively segment online audiences was constrained by immature technology and insufficient access to reliable, accurate consumer data. That paradigm has now changed. With the emergence of technologies such as social login to acquire registered users online and solutions to store and activate rich user profile data from social networks, the cure for mistargeting is at our fingertips.

Improve Email Performance with Profile Data

Michael Olson — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:34:43 +0000

If you are seeking to apply big data to connect with your consumers, email marketing is the low-hanging fruit. Targeted emails containing personalized content and offers enjoy a nearly 4X greater click-through rate than generic email offers. Unlike advertising and content personalization, whose complex algorithms are heavily reliant upon third-party data, successful email campaigns can be executed exclusively using data that you own – registration and transaction information.

Using social login, marketers can instantly gain permission-based access to the profile data they care about – rich demographic data and interests straight from a consumer’s social network profile. This data set not only includes a pre-verified email address, name, location and birth date, but also relationship status, political views, hobbies, favorite books, music, movies and television shows. The key is to create micro-segments of consumers who share similar demographic or psychographic characteristics and use them as the basis for targeting.

By selecting the right tools to store and leverage social profile and consumer data, and taking the time to build intelligent segments, marketers can dramatically improve email marketing ROI.

Some of the email performance results organizations have achieved include:

Email segmentation based on demographics and interests led to a 244% increase in email open rates, a 161% increase in email click through rates, and a 330% increase in revenue per mailing for online retailer Paper Style
Email segmentation led to an 80% increase in email open rates
Personalized eCommerce emails led to a 30% increase in average order value for Shoes.com

We share more real world examples and best practices for utilizing social profile data for email segmentation in our ebook titled From Information to Insights: Understanding Big Data Online, if you are interested in learning more.

How the New Facebook News Feed Will Evolve Social Strategy for Marketers

Michael Olson — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:01:54 +0000

A wise and ambitious colleague of mine here at Janrain has boldly aspired to do her part to rid the (online) world of clutter. Clearly, she is not alone. Holding up its end of the bargain, Facebook recently bid adieu to its self-described clutter by launching the latest rendition of its news feed last month. Amid the sleek redesigned look are two subtle changes that will cause marketers to place an increased emphasis on integrating social sharing tools into their brand websites.

Segmented content feeds

While the news feed will remain the default setting on the Facebook home page, users will now be able to toggle between viewing two additional distinct feeds – one featuring updates from friends, and a second exclusively featuring updates from brands liked by the user. Because consumers still use Facebook primarily to interact with friends, and the average Facebook user has 262 friends as opposed to liking about 80 brand pages, Facebook users may increasingly self-select into the content feed featuring updates from friends as opposed to brands.

How will this impact social media marketers? It could yield a decrease in impressions for posts from liked brand pages. If we assume that impressions within the friends feed will trump impressions within the feed for followed brands due to our natural predisposition to favor content from friends, then brands will need to find new ways to penetrate the news feed and disseminate their content. Social sharing, which empowers online consumers to share comments, articles, purchases, products and other content from websites directly to their social network, is the golden ticket.

Increased emphasis on visual posts

Facebook is tweaking its news feed algorithm to place greater emphasis on posts and status updates that include rich media. We shouldn’t be surprised by this change. After all, our eyes organically gravitate toward images and videos within the news feed, and these types of posts tend to generate the highest click-through rates.

This change dovetails with a recent assertion that Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm provides up to 1,300 percent more weight to shares than likes in terms of placement within the news feed. This is good news for marketers seeking to encourage the use of social sharing on their own websites, due to the fact that content published to Facebook via an effective sharing technology solution dynamically incorporates a thumbnail image from the page, in addition to populating the page’s meta title and description into the shared post.

You’ve probably heard us say it before, but as networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn become so entrenched in our culture, social feeds are evolving into a powerful recommendation engine for new content, ideas and products. In short, our friends are helping us navigate the web. The latest evolution in Facebook’s news feed will reward digital marketers who grasp this paradigm shift and empower consumers to advocate on their behalf.

What do you think of Facebook’s news feed changes? How do you plan to evolve your social sharing and Facebook strategies as a result of the changes? I’d love to hear your take in the comments below.

Social Login Trends Across the Web for Q1 2013

Michael Olson — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:00:14 +0000

If you’re like 87% of people, you have likely come across the option to register at a website using one of your existing social network or email identities. This is known as social login, a technology that Janrain pioneered to solve the challenge websites have faced when acquiring users online via traditional registration processes. As web users, we don’t like filling out registration forms from scratch. Nor do we enjoy maintaining dozens of distinct usernames and passwords on each site that we frequently visit.

The advent of social media has emboldened us to foster personas for ourselves online. But the social media landscape is fragmented. We tend to use Facebook to interact with friends and family, Twitter to follow influencers and share opinions, LinkedIn as our professional network, and Gmail, Yahoo! or Hotmail to communicate directly with our important contacts. Combined, more than 2.5 billion of us maintain accounts with these services, and social login solves the registration challenge by making it possible to use those identities to easily sign up and log in on sites across the web.

But which identity providers are the most popular choices? Each quarter, we seek to answer this question by analyzing social login preferences for online consumers across all websites using Janrain. Why do these trends matter for digital marketer? Social login preferences are a leading indicator of consumer trust in the different online identity providers. If I use my Google account to login and participate on sites across the web, for example, that choice serves as an indication of the trust and affinity felt toward Google’s service.

__________

When it comes to social login, our data shows that people want choice. Facebook currently leads as the most popular identity provider for social login. During Q1, Facebook did lose ground to Google for the second consecutive quarter, dropping in popularity from 49% during Q4 2012 to 46% in Q1 2013, while Google’s share of social logins ascended from 31% to 34% during the same period.

Despite the moderate decrease in share of social logins during Q4, Facebook still remains the most popular choice for the ninth consecutive quarter. After reaching an all-time quarterly high during Q3, Twitter’s share also decreased moderately during each of the last two quarters.

LinkedIn enjoys substantial popularity on sites that cater toward business professionals, with as many as 80% of business professionals choosing to log in with their LinkedIn identity on some B2B websites. A majority of us maintain our professional online identity on LinkedIn. When using this identity to register on B2B sites, consumers can choose to grant the website access to their LinkedIn profile information, including a verified email address, first and last name, company name, job title and industry. The site can then use this information to conveniently pre-populate a sign-up form, which eliminates the need for consumers to fill out the form from scratch or enter lots of redundant details about themselves.

We also have observed disparate preferences across geographic regions. For example, Hyves contends with Facebook as the most popular social network in the Netherlands, and social login preferences on Dutch websites substantiate that notion. In Brazil and India, Orkut is a popular identity provider for social login, while in China, Sina Weibo and Renren maintain popularity. Mixi is a common social login choice in Japan, while VK is preferred in Russia.

As with prior analyses, we have taken a sampling of sites in four industry verticals to measure trends in consumer login preferences. While the overall story arc is similar, there are disparate preferences within each vertical that merit attention.

Despite its decreased share across all Janrain customer websites, Facebook still leads other social networks and email providers across prominent industry verticals including media, retail, entertainment and gaming, consumer brands, and music-related sites. Its popularity is especially pronounced on entertainment, gaming, retail and consumer brand websites.

Google is performing well as the second most favored portable identity provider across each of these verticals, but its popularity is most evident on retail and consumer brand sites, which could perhaps be a reflection of the trust that people place in Google as a secure provider of their online identity. With Janrain’s recent launch of Google+ as a sign-in provider, we expect the propensity for consumers to choose a Google identity for social login to increase throughout 2013.

What do these findings mean for your business? As you work to add a social layer to your site to improve engagement and drive conversions, social login and sharing should be fully integrated. We hope these findings provide a useful benchmark as you optimize your on-site social media strategy.

For Digital Marketers:

Social login helps solve the challenge of how to collect more accurate data on your users while increasing registration conversion rates at the same time. Social login shortens the registration process to a single click and gives you instant permission-based access to rich demographic, psychographic and social graph data on your users. This social profile data can be leveraged for content personalization or product recommendations and more tailored segmentation and targeting. Social sharing enables your users to broadcast content and activities from your site to their social networks, increasing brand advocacy and creating an effective source of qualified referral traffic back to your site.

For Developers and Technologists:

It can be a big headache to implement the plumbing to each social network API on your own. These networks use different protocols under the hood, such as OpenID, OAuth, hybrids and proprietary technologies. As a result, coding social login on your own requires a significant investment of time, engineering expertise and ongoing maintenance as the networks change their APIs, often without advanced notice. Your social login and sharing solution should allow you to easily connect to all the social networks by writing once to a single API. By cutting deployment times from weeks or months to a couple days, you can focus on your core competency while trusting that the social and user management tools on your site just work.

Janrain Launches Support for Google+ Sign-In

Michael Olson — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:01:14 +0000

The introduction of Google+ in 2011 has amplified a diverse and rapidly evolving social networking landscape. With more than 500 million members and a seamless integration with popular Google services such as Gmail, Android, Google Calendar, YouTube, Google+ has rapidly become one of the leading social networks on the web.

That’s why we’re excited today to launch a new integration with Google+ Sign-In. With this product launch, Janrain customers can streamline the registration process for Google users, and gather additional profile data to better engage with and improve their experience.

Here is a run down of what’s new:

Simple, secure login

Google+ Sign-In helps improve registration conversion rates by offering a convenient and secure way for visitors to sign up on your site. We’ve made it really easy for websites to get up and running with Google+ Sign-In via Janrain Engage Social Login.

Gather Additional Public Demographic Information

In addition to a verified email address and a first and last name, users can now choose to share additional information from their Google+ profile when they log in to your site. Collect demographic and psychographic data such as gender, location, birthdate, interests, work history, education history, relationship status, profile photo and any other information made public within the user’s Google+ profile.

Access Google+ Social Graphs

Google+ Sign-In enables users to provide access to their Google+ circles of friends. Utilize this social graph information to let users discover what their friends are up to on your site, interact with friends, and surface content recommended by friends.

Drive Adoption of Android Apps

Let your website users instantly download and install your mobile or tablet app to their Android device. Your users with Android devices don’t need to visit the Google Play store to install your Android app – instead, you can easily prompt them to do so in a single click when they sign in to your site with their Google identity.

You are invited to check out Google+ Sign-in on NPR, HSN and several Universal Music Group artist websites, including LadyGaga.com, Eminem.com and JustinBieberMusic.com.

The team at Janrain has been hard at work, and we are excited to offer the benefits of Google+ Sign-In to you. As always, your feedback is welcome.

Social Login Trends Across the Web for Q4 2012

Michael Olson — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:49:22 +0000

Which Identity Providers are the Most Popular Choices?

Each quarter, we seek to answer this question by analyzing social login preferences for online consumers across all websites using Janrain. These trends are significant because social login preferences are a leading indicator of consumer trust in the different online identity providers. If I use my Google account to login and participate on sites across the web, for example, such a choice serves as an indication of the trust and affinity felt toward that service.

__________

When it comes to social login, our data shows that people want choice. For the 8^th consecutive quarter, Facebook leads as the most popular identity provider for social login. During Q4, Facebook did lose ground to Google, dropping in popularity from 54% to 49%, while Google’s share of social logins ascended from 25% to 31%.

Despite the moderate decrease in share of social logins during Q4, Facebook still remains the most popular choice for the eighth consecutive quarter. After reaching an all-time quarterly high during Q3, Twitter’s share also decreased moderately to 7% during Q4.

Most Popular Social Login Providers By Vertical

Despite its decreased share across all Janrain customer websites, Facebook still leads other social networks and email providers across prominent industry verticals including media, retail, entertainment and gaming, and music-related sites. Its popularity is especially pronounced on entertainment, music, gaming and consumer brand websites. Facebook did make notable gains on retail and eCommerce sites during Q4, with a 5% increase in share of social logins.

Google is performing well as the second most favored portable identity provider across each of these verticals, but its popularity is most evident on retail sites, which could perhaps be a reflection of the trust that people place in Google as a secure provider of their online identity.

Mobile Social Login Trends

On mobile applications, Facebook and Google lead in popularity, followed by Twitter and Yahoo!.

Conclusion

What do these findings mean for your business? As you work to add a social layer to your site to improve engagement and drive conversions, social login should be fully integrated. We hope these findings provide a useful benchmark as you optimize your online user acquisition strategy.

Announcing the New Janrain User Registration Solution

Michael Olson — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:50:39 +0000

As digital marketers and technologists, I’m sure we would all agree that user registration is a critical component of any website today. It’s difficult to develop actionable insight about, and engage with, site visitors without first understanding who they are. That’s why identity, revealed via registration, is so important – it holds the keys to driving customer engagement and more effective marketing initiatives.

We work with many organizations that operate under the constraints of legacy, homegrown registration systems. These often require significant time and resource investments to maintain, augment or revamp to ensure that sites are collecting richer, and more accurate, profile information from their registered users.

We were the first to introduce a hosted registration solution for websites back in 2010. With our latest product release, we’ve made it even easier for our customers to rapidly deploy a comprehensive user registration solution packed with features to help ensure data quality, integrity, and maximize sign-up rates.

Here is an overview of just a few of the features supported within our next generation user registration solution, already deployed by global brands such as Mattel, Fox News, Cox Media Group, Dr Pepper, Whole Foods, the UK’s Channel 4 and others:

Customizable Data Collection Forms and Workflow

The new solution makes it easier to deploy customizable data collection forms for registration, newsletter sign-ups, polls, surveys, contests or promotions, or extending registration beyond your site by embedding forms within a branded social network presence. Dr Pepper, for example, has embedded registration forms as well as social login into custom Facebook tabs and applications to develop a deeper understanding of its fans.

Our solution also includes built in email confirmation workflows to take the hassle out of validating user identities upon sign-up.

Inline Field Validation

Our latest release has made it easier to take advantage of features that ensure data quality, such as inline field validation, dirty word filters and terms of service (TOS) acceptance. Validate email address or postal code formats in real-time, verify age or password requirements, and build integrity from the data you collect at registration.

Password Management and Reset Workflow

Our user registration solution enables you to deliver customizable password reset emails right to your user’s inbox, and handles password management and secure reset flows on your behalf.

User Profile Pages

Deploy configurable user profile pages that include name, email, demographics, photos, interests, subscription preferences and more. The solution helps build community engagement by empowering users to set individual fields in their site profiles as either public or private.

Conditional Workflows

We’ve built a new feature that allows sites to dynamically trigger new fields or flows based on previous inputs to a form, or existing profile data stored. Conditional workflows enable websites to collect richer data about their users by employing progressive profiling.

Mobile Web Optimization

These days, as much as 30% of web usage occurs via mobile phones, making it as critical ever for websites to offer optimized registration flows on mobile and tablet devices. Our user registration solution enables customers to dynamically resize registration forms and user profile pages to provide an optimal mobile and tablet web experience for user registration and profile management.

Analytics Integrations

We’ve added a powerful new JavaScript API that empowers deeper insights about conversion funnels and registration. The solution allows customers to easily integrate registration and login events into web analytics platforms such as Adobe SiteCatalyst, Coremetrics, Google Analytics and Webtrends.

Improved Speed and Performance

Lastly, our user registration solution is faster than ever. We’ve made several performance enhancements to improve response times for all user data collection forms, profile pages and field validation rules. The new version of the solution abandons any use of embedded iframes – instead, all registration forms and profile pages render via HTML, CSS and JavaScript elements that are served from within the client.

The team at Janrain has been hard at work, and we’re very excited to bring the next generation of our industry-leading user registration solution to you. As always, your feedback is welcome.

Can you Implement Janrain Social Sharing Faster Than Our VP of Sales?

Michael Olson — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 20:16:28 +0000

If you’ve read our blog for the past several months, then it is likely that you have heard us wax poetic about one of the major benefits of Janrain’s social sharing features: they are so easy to implement. How easy, you ask? We decided to put Paul Salzinger, Janrain’s VP of Sales, to the test by seeing just how long it takes for someone with no formal programming expertise to implement the feature. We hooked him up with a Janrain Engage application, set up a localhost environment with a static web page featuring an image and some content, and started the clock.

Here are the steps Paul followed to implement Janrain social sharing:

Sign in to the Janrain Engage product dashboard (if you already have an account; if not, simply sign up), scroll down to the “application info” section, and ensure that your website domain and any development sandboxes have been added to the domain whitelist. This security feature prevents malicious websites from grabbing your site’s code and using your Janrain social login or sharing application on their site:
On the dashboard home page, click “Social Sharing for Websites” in the Quick Links sidebar:
Change the share mode to “Share + Direct Share” to enable users to share content with selected friends or contacts – we refer to this experience as “targeted sharing”:
Click “Email Providers” and check the box to enable email sharing. If you haven’t already done so, you will need to follow a few simple steps to configure a Google and Yahoo! developer application for email sharing, which takes about five minutes per provider.
Use the WYSIWYG drag-and drop editor to select the social networks you would like to include within the social sharing widget, and the order in which they appear. If you haven’t already done so, you will need to follow a few simple steps to configure a developer application for these social networks, which takes about five minutes per provider (does that sound familiar?).
Use the controls to toggle between landscape and portrait orientation for the social sharing widget, and also view how it will look on a mobile device:
Use the intuitive styling controls within the dashboard editor to change background colors, font colors and sizes, border, button, tab and link colors, widths, radius, opacity and more:
Once you’ve styled the social sharing widget to your liking, save your changes. For our test scenario, Paul decided to stick with the default look and feel. Now it’s time to grab the widget JavaScript code. Note the editable settings within the widget code to customize the title and description of shared content, pre-populate a user-generated message, and tailor the referral URL. These settings can be edited from within the dashboard or inline within the JavaScript code. Once you’re ready, copy the widget code and paste it into the within relevant pages of your site:
We asked Paul to deploy Janrain social sharing on a page featuring this beautiful, majestic photo of Mt. Hood. Our graphic design team was kind enough to supply the silky share button that appears beneath the photo. Wrap the
tag listed above in the dashboard screenshot around an image, button or call to action in order to initiate the social sharing widget on the page:
Success! The social sharing widget is now implemented. Test it out by clicking the share button to render the widget as a modal overlay on top of the page. The social sharing widget can also be easily embedded into the page if preferred instead of the lightbox UI treatment.

Now, let’s test the social sharing widget to ensure that it functions correctly. Click to share with Facebook, at which point a permission screen appears in a new browser window asking the user to approve permissions:

After the user approves permissions, he can complete a broadcast share to all of his Facebook friends by sharing this wonderful photo of Mt. Hood to his timeline, or he can choose to share it with selected recipients by browsing a list of friends within the widget. This targeted sharing experience is also supported for Twitter (via direct messages)), LinkedIn (via inbox messages) and email.

Once the user has selected the recipients, he can edit his shared message within the text box in the widget, and click to share. Notice that the meta description and photo have been automatically added to the shared message for Facebook (and LinkedIn) within the rich media portion, as designated by the widget code:

When one of the recipients of this shared message accesses her Facebook account, she will notice a message from the user shared directly to her Facebook timeline, which also triggers a notification within Facebook for added visibility:

The user can also share with his email contacts by connecting his Google identity, then browsing a list of his Gmail contacts:

Once a recipient is selected, the user can craft a personal email and send it from within the share widget:

The recipient now receives an email in her inbox with a link to the photo of Mt. Hood. Because the Janrain social sharing feature uses Gmail and/or Yahoo! as its default mail clients, the email looks as if it was sent directly from the user’s email:

That’s all there is to it! Using only the setup wizard within the Janrain Engage product dashboard and the quick start guide on our developers site, our VP of Sales was able to get up and running with Janrain social sharing in less than 30 minutes by following these ten simple steps, despite possessing no formal programming experience. It’s that simple.

The question is, can you beat Paul? The challenge has been set forth. Take the test, and let us know how long it takes for you to get up and running with Janrain social sharing.