Several times each week, the Janrain services and support team comes across a particular implementation of Janrain Engage that makes our hearts swell with pride.  Yesterday was one of those days.

EasyBib is one of those great websites you wish you knew about back in college.  It is a free tool that lets you instantly build a bibliography simply by entering a website address, keyword, book title, newspaper or journal article.  In total, EasyBib can also automatically create proper citations for up to 58 content types for you.

The site uses Janrain Engage for social sign-on to make the registration process a snap.  Once registered, users can save, store and share multiple projects.  EasyBib also offers plugins and APIs that developers can use to integration citation capabilities on their site.
What is unique to EasyBib’s deployment is its intuitive registration interface.  Site visitors are immediately presented with the option to quickly register using a social network account, and for those who prefer the traditional method, EasyBib has designed a custom button next to the Janrain Engage social login widget.

When clicked, this button spawns a registration form below using JavaScript, enabling users to sign-up the traditional way if preferred.

Using Janrain Engage, EasyBib has more than doubled its site registration rate, and its well-designed registration interface has significantly increased the percentage of new users that choose to sign-in with a social network account as opposed to the traditional method.  Why is this important?  Not only does social sign-on give EasyBib instant access to a richer and more accurate set of social profile data on its users, this data can be refreshed each time a user signs in to ensure that the site’s database is always up to date.

As EasyBib co-founder Darshan Somashekar put it, “Asking people to create accounts the traditional way has been a hurdle for us because no one wants to, but making the registration and login process simple eases much of that friction.”

View a short screencast on how this looks on EasyBib.com: