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.

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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.

What struck me immediately was that almost every single consumer (98%) is still reporting that companies send them information, promotions, offers, etc. that aren’t relevant. Think about that for a moment.  Despite all the progress marketers have made as a result of technology, we haven’t moved too far from the days when we weren’t sure which 50% of our marketing budget was wasted.

An explanation emerges after digging into the details…engaging with an online visitor starts with knowing who they are. In the offline world we get clues from the way they are dressed, where we are meeting them, how they speak, etc. Online we’ve tried to get our clues based on what they do on our site and by asking them to reveal information via long registration forms.

But as past research has confirmed, people don’t like registration forms and those pesky passwords. First, they can’t remember all their username/password combinations (more then half report having more then 5 unique combinations), but 92% admit having left a site rather than resetting or recovering login information.

And when consumers do oblige and complete a registration form, the data they provide is often misleading – around four in five admit to giving false or incomplete information. So who’s fault is it if you claim to be a woman when you’re not and you get annoyed when a company offers you a discount on women’s shoes?

The good news is that social login can help close this engagement gap. Not only are 87% of consumers aware of social login, more than half use it. Beyond the convenience social login offers at registration or return visits, it also can be a key component in delivering a personal and relevant experience to that user.

That’s because when social login is invoked, marketers ask permission to use a consumers’ social profile data to personalize content based on information such as location, hobbies and interests. In one of the most compelling statistics in the study, 59% of consumers find it very useful to receive targeted products and promotions based on their social login profiles. At least half also responded positively to receiving additional information on their favorite topics such as a recent news article.

Feel free to dig into the additional findings and insights by downloading the full research study here.

I also want to thank our research partner, Paul Abel, Managing Partner of Blue Research for his diligence in pursuit of insights.

Most of you reading this probably can relate to these consumers and probably agree with them to a fairly high degree.  Having to create a new username/password combination – with a strong password, no less – is a pain.  And while three quarters of people reported they always try to create strong passwords, nearly 40% report having to ask for assistance at least once a month due to a forgotten password.  This is a cost carried by the websites – brands have to answer each of these requests.

I personally don’t believe that 75% of people always create strong passwords either; I think there is some survey bias here, similar to when you ask people if they are better than average drivers.  No one wants to admit they don’t follow good practice advice, but the data coming out of every single reported breach indicates that they don’t.  Check out the infographic from Rapid7 with their analysis of the most popular passwords cracked in a recent breach.  I thought I had read that “password” was the number one choice, but according to Rapid7, it was “link.”  Hard to argue that strong password rules are being followed when you see that!

The risk here is that it is getting easier and easier for crackers to figure out your password – if you doubt this statement, read this article.  But there is a solution…

These stats are one of the main reasons I am so passionate about Janrain’s business.  By deploying social login, our clients are able to cut costs (no more having to answer lost/forgotten password calls as the responsibility of protecting passwords shifts to the Identity Providers like Facebook or Google), increase consumer acquisition (86% of consumers report having left a site when asked to register), and most importantly, have the ability to create more compelling and relevant experiences for their online visitors.

How many unique passwords do YOU have, and can all of them be considered “strong?”

Similar to prior analyses, we have taken a sampling of sites in prominent industry verticals to measure trends in consumer login preferences. While the overall story arc is similar across these verticals, there are disparate preferences within each segment that merit attention.

On media websites, Facebook leads in popularity with 43% of users preferring to register or login using their Facebook profile. Yahoo! and Google are running strong as the second and third most popular providers at roughly 19% apiece. Despite a modest decline over the past two quarters, Yahoo! continues to perform best in this vertical – perhaps as a result of its realignment as a content network during the past several years. Twitter’s share within this segment has yet to accelerate, but its potential for future growth makes it worth keeping an eye on, particularly given its focus as a network for content discovery.

For marketers and digital strategists managing these types of sites, effective engagement with readers begins by offering incentives for registration. Whether it is to comment on news articles, join a vibrant community, or unlock premium content, visitors need a compelling reason to share their personal information and create an account on your site. Bicycling Magazine, which is a property of Rodale, makes the benefits of registering clear to its visitors. And because registration is offered with a social identity, the process is a breeze, requiring only two clicks. Goodbye lengthy forms and struggling conversion rates.

Similarly, The Sun, one of the largest daily newspapers in the United Kingdom, prompts readers to easily register or login with a Facebook or Twitter identity in order to post comments on articles.

Social login implementations such as these generate tangible business results for content and community sites. For example, lifestyle magazine Divine Caroline, a Meredith property, saw a nearly immediate 12% increase in registrations after adding social login to its registration flow.

On entertainment and gaming sites, which tend to be more community-oriented, Facebook again leads the pack by a wide margin. But 57% of users prefer to login with a different social identity. Within this vertical, Google earns 23% share as the second most popular network. It’s also worth noting that while Windows Live (Hotmail/MSN) maintains an 8% share of social logins on entertainment and gaming websites, this is a 6% decrease from the previous quarter.

More than ever, people are using their social networks to share interesting news articles and content with their friends. On media sites, it is now common to be presented with the option to share an article comment with Facebook friends, Twitter followers or LinkedIn connections.

Across the websites of all Janrain Engage customers, Facebook and Twitter are far and away the most popular sharing destinations, but Yahoo!, LinkedIn and MySpace maintain preference on niche sites that are catered to their audience (B2B sites for LinkedIn and music sites for MySpace).

Creating a viral loop of referral traffic between your site and the social networks requires more than just dropping a few generic share buttons on various pages. Social sharing needs to be contextually integrated into the user experience on your site. For example, VH1, an MTV property, lets music fans share videos and their reactions to them after posting comments.

When implemented strategically, social sharing can become a steady and valuable source of qualified traffic to your site. Citysearch, for example, generates an average of 28 referral visits to its site each time a member shares his or her review of a local business to a social network stream.

Social login and sharing open the door to collecting a rich amount of profile data from a user’s social network account, and each social network provides a different set of profile data on their users. This information can be used to speed registration, create community by leveraging a user’s social graph (friends), and enable personalization of content or email campaigns based on a user’s demographics or interests. Here is a look at the profile data that users can choose to share with your site from their social network:

Social login has achieved significant adoption on media and entertainment websites during the past several years. Understanding how consumers leverage their social identities to connect and interact on these sites helps you tailor content your audience, improve engagement and drive higher CPMs from advertisers.

Coupled with increasing reluctance from consumers to maintain distinct usernames and passwords on each frequently visited site, brands are rapidly seeking ways to leverage social network identities within their own properties. Through a secure process known as social login, these identities can be used to speed up registration on sites across the web. But which identities do people prefer both for sign-in and content sharing?

Each quarter, we seek to answer these questions by analyzing social login and social sharing preferences for online users across the 365,000 websites using Janrain Engage.  Today, MediaPost published an update of our quarterly social login and sharing data.

Download full PDF here.

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 Marketers:

Social login helps solve the challenge of how to collect more accurate data on your users without sacrificing registration conversion rates. Social login shortens the registration process to a single click and gives you instant 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 lets your users broadcast content and activities from your site to their social networks, increasing brand advocacy and creating an effective channel to drive qualified referral traffic 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.

And they had reason to challenge this theory, as indicated by the shift in traffic from the brand website to their Facebook fan page. But at some point this perspective changed as brand marketers realized that traffic to their site was dwindling faster than their community was growing, and that keeping fans engaged and participating on Facebook was a daily challenge.

Now those marketers want to bring traffic back to their site and are looking for new ways to engage with their fans within their own web properties, not just at Facebook. It’s not always easy and many companies are  struggling to figure this out, as was evident in this recent SmartPulse poll from SmartBrief:

Over 64% of the marketers polled do not have a strategy to integrate social engagement elements into their own site. Rest assured that if you’re confused about how to best approach this, you’re not alone and can learn from others who have integrated social solutions into their site with success.

Join Altimeter analyst Jeremiah Owyang during our webinar November 2nd to discover practical tips for on-site social media integration that you can act on now. Jeremiah will unveil new data points on the evolution of the social brand website, and provide real world case studies so you have actionable takeaways that can be immediately applied to your social strategy.

Webinar Details:

Wed, November 2 10am PDT
Register here to join the webinar.
 

These are some of the questions we try to answer each quarter by analyzing preferred networks for social login and social sharing across the 350,000 websites worldwide that use Janrain Engage.  Today, TechCrunch published an update of our quarterly social login and social sharing trend data.

For the first time since we began reporting these statistics in January 2010, Facebook has eclipsed Google as the most popular sign-in choice.  During Q1 of 2011 (January 1^st – March 31st), 35% of online users chose to sign-in to sites with a Facebook account compared to 27% in Q4 of 2010.

Despite Facebook’s popularity across a number of verticals, this data underscores the value of choice.  Uniform preference among social media providers simply does not exist, given that 65% of internet users on the 350,000 sampled websites prefer to use an identity other than Facebook for social sign-in.  Beyond the two largest players (Facebook and Google), there is evidence that supporting other major networks like Yahoo!, Twitter, Windows Live and LinkedIn can open your website to a larger audience.

Facebook’s ascent during the past quarter is at the expense of Google, while all additional social identity providers have remained fairly consistent.  Despite its momentum as an emerging global phenomenon, we have not detected a significant rise in popularity for Twitter as a sign-in provider, but this is not an indictment of its influence as a social network.  We’ll cover this in more detail in a bit.

Below is a quarter-by-quarter examination of social login preferences during the past 18 months:

As we have learned from past analyses, the data tells a different story upon further inspection by industry vertical:

Facebook is the most popular sign-in choice on news media sites for the second consecutive quarter, experiencing modest growth from its 32% share the prior period.  Yahoo! continues to perform best in this vertical, commanding 28% share of all social logins.

Facebook has a much stronger lead on magazine publisher sites and continues to hover at around 50%, and Google and Yahoo swap places for second andthird place as compared with newspaper sites. Interestingly, Facebook’s share in this vertical two quarters ago was 57%.

Facebook has also picked up momentum in the retail space, with a quarterly growth rate of about 5% over the past three quarters.  This moderate increase is mostly at the expense of Yahoo!, whereas Google’s share has held steady over the past four quarters. Comparing login preferences in retail year over year, we see 10% increase for Facebook, an 11% loss for Yahoo and little variance amongst the other providers. As new providers such as PayPal gain momentum, it will be interesting to see how this particular vertical changes in 2011.

On entertainment and gaming sites, Windows Live continues to draw a higher share of total logins than in other verticals.  This could be due to its historical significance as a gaming hub and/or the presence of several European gaming companies in our sample (more on this later), but our quarterly data indicates a drop in popularity from 19% last quarter.  At the expense of Windows Live, Google has recorded the most significant increase in popularity from 13% to 20% over the past quarter.

Among the more than 150 music sites sampled, which includes those of popular artists as well as internet radio sites, Facebook again leads, but preferences do not mirror the larger entertainment vertical.  Twitter and Windows Live, for example, earn 13% share apiece while Yahoo! lags behind at 6%.

On mobile devices, Facebook and Google lead the pack by a considerable margin.  Twitter’s share (11%) is greater on mobile devices than desktop platforms.

If your website or brand serves a global audience, it is crucial to observe the variance in sign-in preferences across different geographic markets.  Windows Live, for example is twice as popular in Europe as a sign-in choice when compared with the U.S.  Hyves commands as much as 60% share of all social logins on websites in the Netherlands, and regional portals such Web.de and GMX are popular in Germany.  In Southeast Asia, Yahoo! is the preeminent social login choice, and Google performs well in Brazil due to the popularity of Orkut, a Google service.

As close followers of Janrain know, social login is only part of the equation.  Our customers use Janrain Engage social sharing to make it easy for their users to share content to their social networks, which generates word of mouth marketing and builds brand awareness.  On average, Janrain customers enjoy 13 new referral visits to their site from each post a user makes to a social network.

Facebook and Twitter are the leading social sharing destinations, and Twitter’s popularity here is noteworthy when contrasted with the aforementioned social login data.  We’ve found that while most online users do not yet self-select Twitter as their primary online identity, the Twitter stream exerts great influence as a hub for content-sharing and a navigator to other sites across the web.

LinkedIn is also emerging as a more popular sharing destination, particularly on sites with a B2B focus.  This trend does not surprise us given LinkedIn’s recent news feed enhancements.  Yahoo!’s popularity remains consistent from prior quarters, and MySpace is still the go-to network for sharing on entertainment and music sites. Janrain Engage enables social sharing to multiple networks simultaneously.

So what does this data mean for your business?  If you are just dipping your toes into the social sea and considering adopting social login and sharing, these findings may serve as a valuable benchmark for your industry and provide guidance on how to better serve your online audience.

For marketers, social sign-in eases registration friction, allowing you to accelerate user acquisition and collect richer demographic, psychographic and social graph data for personalization and monetization.  Social sharing helps power word-of-mouth marketing, transform your users into brand advocates and uncover a valuable new source of referral traffic.

For technologists, implementing the plumbing on your own to support login for each social network requires significant development resources and technical expertise.  Because each social network uses different protocols such as OpenID, OAuth, hybrids or proprietary technologies, writing individually to each network comes with substantial opportunity cost.  Turnkey social tools that aggregate these complex protocols into one simple API free you to focus on your core competency while eliminating ongoing maintenance and variability that occurs when the social networks release new features or change their APIs.

You can view an archive of our previous quarterly reports below:

December 2010 – What are the Most Popular Networks for Social Login and Sharing on the Web?
August 2010 – Measuring the Popularity of Social media Platforms Across the Web
April 2010 – Data Reveals Trends Among Social Media Platforms
January 2010 – Data on Industry Trends in Social Media Platforms

The impact on brands is significant. Consumers interested in using social sign-in are more valuable to companies – they are more likely to return to sites offering social sign-in, they spend larger dollar amounts on the site and have more favorable views about the brand.

Join us on Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 9AM PDT / 12PM EDT for an insightful webinar where Paul Abel, Founder and Managing Partner of Blue Research, will walks us through several of the results from this recent study.

» Register for this webinar here

Beyond simply measuring the relative success of each identity provider by their user volumes, we are digging deeper to measure the relative reach and influence of each network across a number of key vertical market segments.  We define reach in this case as the popularity of each social network as a provider of online identity for user login across the web, and influence as a social network’s ability to drive traffic to a website via social sharing.

Across the 300,000 websites using Janrain Engage, Google remains the most popular provider.  Facebook has improved its position by 3% compared to three months ago, and Twitter’s overall share has improved from 5% to 7% of overall login preference.  Yahoo! has held constant at 14% share.

An analysis of various industry verticals tells a different story.  Yahoo! was the prevailing provider among news media companies three months ago, comprising 34% of social logins on sampled sites.  During the past quarter, Facebook’s share in this segment has grown at the expense of Yahoo!, Google and AOL.  Despite the moderate decrease this quarter among the 25 sites sampled, news media sites remain one of Yahoo!’s highest-performing verticals in terms of social login preference.  Keep an eye on Twitter, as it improved from 4% to 6% share in this vertical over the last quarter.

There is considerable diversity in login preferences between news and magazine sites.  Facebook is the clear leader for magazine publishers, with 49% of users on sampled sites preferring to sign-in with a Facebook identity.  However, this number has declined 8% from last quarter largely due to the moderate emergence of Windows Live and AOL at 4% share apiece. Google and Yahoo! have held steady as the second and third most popular networks within this market segment.

Among entertainment and gaming sites, Facebook leads by a considerable margin, which is not altogether surprising given the popularity of social games on the web and particularly within Facebook communities.  Windows Live is a surprising second choice in this vertical.  Among the 12 entertainment companies comprising this sample, several are European social gaming sites, a geographic region where Windows Live performs relatively well.  More on this later.

Among the more than 150 music sites sampled, including those of popular artists, Facebook maintains the lead it held three months ago.  However, it’s important to note a 5% decline in relative popularity as a social login provider compared to last quarter.  The biggest winner in this segment is Google, which improved from 8% share to 17%, overtaking Twitter for second place.  Google’s spike is indicative of an expanded sample size, particularly in South America where Google/Orkut is an established provider.

Perhaps more than any other vertical sampled, the social login preferences in the retail vertical have remained most constant.  Facebook continues to be the most popular network, picking up 2% share relative to last quarter, but Google and Yahoo! also perform fairly well.  We anticipate accelerated adoption of social login technology in the retail space in 2011.  Watch this blog for future updates.

For the first time, we have compiled data on the most popular networks for social login on mobile devices, compiled from a sample of entertainment, technology, non-profit and online guide sites using Janrain Engage for iPhone.  Facebook and Google lead the pack at 34% and 30%, respectively, while Twitter is twice as popular a sign-in provider on the iPhone.  This is expected given the percentage of Twitter users who access the service via mobile devices.

We’ve also included non-profit sites for the first time, and see a distribution similar to other verticals.  What accounts for this?  Many non-profit sites function as commerce/retail sites to fundraise, as well as content/media sites to promote causes or community/entertainment sites to facilitate engagement.

Similar to last quarter, we want to note that Windows Live remains twice as popular a social login provider in Europe as in the US, and its share has increased from 8% to 11% despite the emergence of more localized social networks and email providers.  These providers, such as Hyves (Netherlands), Netlog (Belgium), Web.de and GMX (Germany) comprise over 10% of social logins from our sample of 20 European customers.  Their growth in social login popularity across the Atlantic comes at the expense of Google, Twitter and Yahoo!

As we’ve discussed on this blog, social login is only part of the equation, and Janrain’s savviest customers utilize social sharing to increase site traffic and build online word of mouth.  Facebook and Twitter dominate at 61% and 35%, respectively, with Facebook earning a 6% increase from last quarter.  However, 17% of users on Janrain Engage customer sites also like to share to their Yahoo! or MySpace communities.  Yahoo! Updates has increased in popularity as a sharing destination during the past three months, up 3% from last quarter.  Keep an eye on LinkedIn, which is growing increasingly popular as a sharing destination, especially on B2B sites.

One thing to note with this data – Janrain Engage supports sharing to multiple social networks simultaneously, enabling users to share a purchase, article comment, high score in a game or other activity with friends on all the major social networks at once.  Janrain customers generate an average of 12 new referral visits to their site for each activity shared to a social network. This data point is indicative of the power of making it easy for users to share activities from a website to their social networks. Given that last quarter the average was 9 new referral visits for each social post, we have seen a 33% increase in just a quarter.

So what are the key takeaways from this data?  If your organization is just beginning to think about adopting social login or sharing, these findings can serve as a benchmark for your industry.  The social space is evolving rapidly, and in order to maximize return on investment and position your organization for sustained future success, it is best to cast a wide net and incorporate social login and sharing technologies that support multiple social networks and identity providers.

We will continually be adding new information to this site, so please check back often. If you don’t find what you are looking for, we encourage you to contact us. Our team is always excited to dive in to learn more about your business and suggest ways that we can socialize your site and help take your organization to the next level.

Here is a list of what you will find in our Resources Section:

For Marketers

• Videos: Find product demos, example screencasts and interviews.
• Case Studies: Read about how organizations have benefited from Janrain’s solutions.
• White Papers: Best practices and recommended strategies for your site.
• Datasheets: Full list of benefits and product specs for each Janrain product.
• Webinars: Register for upcoming webinars and view a list of events.
• Newsletter: Sign up to receive regular news on product updates and Janrain happenings.

For Developers

• Technical Videos: Learn more about the flow and technical details of our products.
• Developers Forum: A forum for product announcements and support from the community.
• Janrain Engage Documentation: Integration and API information.
• Plugins & Connectors: Complete list of supported plugins.
• Product Feedback & Feature Requests: Let us know what you’d like us to work on.
• Profile Data By Social Network: Complete list of profile data that Janrain is able to collect.
• Technical Support: Have a specific question? Ask our community board or submit a ticket (Pro/Plus accounts only).