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.

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.

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.

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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.

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, and key profile fields such as our verified email address, company name, job title and industry can be pre-populated on the registration form of a B2B website to dramatically accelerate the sign-up process.

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.

Most Popular Social Login Providers By Vertical

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, 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.

Social Login Trends

For the first time ever since Janrain began analyzing such data nearly three years ago, Facebook’s popularity as a chosen provider for social login eclipsed 50%.  That said, a nearly equivalent percentage of people would rather use a different social identity, such as Google, Twitter or Yahoo!, to log in to sites across the web. When it comes to social login, people want choice. 

Facebook’s share of social logins has increased steadily during the past three years.  Facebook’s 6% growth compared to Q2 2012 primarily came at the expense of Google, whose share dropped from 30% in Q2 to 25% in Q3.  And while Twitter’s share has not flourished at quite the rate we expected three years ago, Twitter checked in at 10% share of social logins in Q3, which is an all-time quarterly high for the network.

It is also interesting to note that preferences differ depending on location. For example, Mixi is the most common social login of choice in Japan, while Hyves contends with Facebook as the most popular social network in the Netherlands.

Social Login Trends by Vertical

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.

Facebook leads across industry verticals including retail, consumer brands, media, entertainment and gaming, and music-related sites.  Its popularity is especially pronounced on music sites and entertainment and gaming sites.  On retail websites, we are witnessing an increasing preference to use PayPal to create an account and sign-in during the checkout process.  PayPal’s share increased to nearly 10% on retail sites in Q3, up from 2% in Q4 2011.

The second most favored portable identity provider across each of these verticals is Google, 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.

It is worth noting that, for the first time in the past five quarters, Yahoo!’s once declining share of social logins leveled out across the major verticals, and it actually picked up 3% share on music sites.  Windows Live (Hotmail/MSN), historically a strong performer on entertainment and gaming sites, has experienced a notable decline in share of social logins during the past year.

Mobile Social Login Trends

On mobile applications, Facebook saw a big jump in popularity as a social login provider in Q3, while Google experienced a small decline.  Not surprisingly, these trends closely mimic desktop web preferences.

Social Share Trends

Social sharing is not just for sharing articles anymore. People are now able to share comments, purchases, reviews and other content from the web to their social networks. As a result, social networks have become a recommendation engine for web users. As we all suspect, Facebook and Twitter are far and away the most popular networks for sharing, but LinkedIn and Yahoo! maintain preference on niche sites that are catered to their audience (B2B sites for LinkedIn, as an example). During the past year, Twitter has rivaled Facebook, with nearly 40% of people preferring to share content they interact with across the web to their Twitter stream.  It’s also worth noting that, since Janrain introduced the capability to support sharing via email to Gmail contacts in June 2012, we are already seeing adoption within that channel.  2% of all sharing activity on the Janrain platform occurred via Gmail in Q3, a trend that we expect will only increase over time given the continued popularity of email as a preferred channel for sharing.

What do these findings mean for your business?

As you optimize your on-site social media strategy, it is important to keep your audience in mind when choosing providers to offer for social login and social sharing. While you might assume one provider will be more popular than others, we’ve found that people prefer choice. If you haven’t offered social login and sharing yet, here are some reasons to do so:

For Digital 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 enables your users broadcast content and activities from your site to their social networks, increasing brand advocacy and creating an effective source of 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.

Click here to download the full infographic [PDF].

Click here to download the full infographic [PDF].

Important Stats

• 86% of people may leave a website when asked to create an account | Click to share
• 50% of people dislike creating new passwords | Click to share
• 60% of people have more than 5 unique passwords to remember | Click to share
• 40% of people use the Forgot Password feature at least once a month | Click to share
• 88% of online users admit they have lied on form | Click to share
• 2 in 5 people would rather solve world peace than create a new password | Click to share
• 2 in 5 people would rather scrub a toilet than create a new password | Click to share
• 77% of online users prefer social login | Click to share
• Facebook is the preferred social login provider of choice | Click to share

Embed Code

<img src="http://janrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/how-to-solve-the-online-registration-challenge.png" alt="How to Solve the Online Registration Challenge Inforgraphic" width="600" /></p> <p><a href="http://bit.ly/registration-challenge">How to Solve the Online Registration Challenge</a> – An infographic by the team at <a href="http://janrain.com">Janrain</a>

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When it comes to social login, people want choice. While Facebook is the most popular option at 48%, a majority would rather use a different social identity, such as Google, Twitter or Yahoo!.

Fueled by an expanding user base and the allure of broadcasting one’s online activities back to Facebook using social sharing and open graph technology, Facebook’s share of social logins has increased steadily during the past two years.  But despite its growth, Google has maintained a foothold of nearly one-third of the market.  And while Twitter’s popularity as a portable identity provider has not flourished at quite the rate we expected three years ago, there remains a loyal and gradually increasing percentage of people who prefer to use Twitter to log in to other sites.

In addition, LinkedIn enjoys substantial popularity on sites that cater toward business professionals, and we’ve observed disparate preferences across geographic regions.  For example, Hyves contends with Facebook as the most popular social network in the Netherlands.  In Brazil and India, Orkut reigns as a popular identity provider.  In China, Sina Weibo and Renren maintain popularity, and Mixi is a common social login choice in Japan.

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.

Facebook 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 music sites and entertainment and gaming sites.  On eCommerce and retail websites, by contrast, a majority of shoppers prefer to register and/or checkout using an identity other than Facebook.

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.
Yahoo!’s share within media and retail sites has declined considerably during the past three years.  Despite operating a portfolio of popular content and destination sites such as Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Sports, plus a popular web mail service in Yahoo! Mail, the network has experienced challenges keeping pace with Google during the past decade.  With the recent appointment of Marissa Mayer, an ex-Google executive, as CEO, perhaps Yahoo! can chart a course to inspire a transformation in loyalty and brand affinity from web users and reverse the social login trend we’ve identified.
It’s also worth noting that Windows Live (Hotmail/MSN), historically a strong performer on entertainment and gaming sites, has experienced a notable decline in share of social logins during the past year.

On mobile applications, Facebook and Google lead in popularity, followed by Twitter and Yahoo!.  Not surprisingly, these trends closely mimic desktop web preferences, except for a proportionally increased share of users preferring Twitter as their portable identity of choice on mobile apps.

More than ever, people are sharing comments, purchases, reviews and other content from the web to their social networks. As a result, social networks have become a recommendation engine for web users. Facebook and Twitter are far and away the most popular sharing destinations, but LinkedIn and Yahoo! maintain preference on niche sites that are catered to their audience (B2B sites for LinkedIn, as an example). During the past year, Twitter’s popularity as a sharing destination has increased at a more prominent rate than other social networks.

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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 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 enables your users broadcast content and activities from your site to their social networks, increasing brand advocacy and creating an effective source of 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.

Additional Coverage

• Marketing Charts: Facebook Gains Ground in Social Logins; Google Popular for Retail (July 24, 2012)

Just yesterday, Google made an announcement that likely didn’t make your newsfeed but I guarantee media buyers can guess the impact. Google is empowering ad viewers the ability to turn off the very ads brands pay to place on their network.

Wait, let’s backup. Google is giving the audience control over the ads they see? For remarketing ads, yes.

If you’re not familiar with remarketing (or retargeting, as it is also known) efforts, this is an ad delivery option that places ads on future sites you visit based on your previous browsing history. Here’s how it works. Michael visits Zappos.com to check out a pair of pants. His next stop is at SportsIllustrated.com to find his favorite team’s schedule and notices two ads for the very pants he was just looking at over at Zappos.

While some may consider this a personalized and very relevant ad experience, keep in mind that most people do not necessarily welcome advertising that distracts from their purpose. For website visitors who never had a chance to opt-in, it comes across as pretty creepy. People don’t understand why they’re “being followed” around the web after visiting a site, and some times they’re still followed after they’ve purchased the item. Our recipient of those Zappos ads, Michael Learmonth, cared enough to write about it.

The old opt-out option for viewers with remarketing ads meant that they’d click on the copy “why am I seeing these ads” and get taken to a page where they can learn about remarketing and opt-out there. That is a huge burden for your website visitors and even the most annoyed people will just continue to get bothered and frustrated rather than take the time to learn more.

Google, recognizing this creep factor and the dissatisfaction of people on the other end of the ad, is putting the website visitor first and giving them the option to turn the feature off. It’s a risky move for the online ad giant as this can be compared to similar threats to the advertising industry from disruptors like satellite radio, DVRs and On Demand.

So what was Google thinking? Google is thinking of the online audience. And the media site. And the brand.

Remarketing efforts often results in an unpleasant experience and, depending on your audience, may lead them to leave your site. That’s the last thing any website wants. As an advertiser or media site, you likely don’t want your brand affiliated with that experience either. Google’s move also improves ad delivery efficiency as advertisers won’t pay to deliver an ad to someone who opts-out because it’s not relevant or they’ve purchased the product.

According to the Google blog, “… we believe it’s an early step in the right direction of giving users control over ads, while helping marketers and websites deliver ads that perform better.”

In attempt to provide monetization tactics for websites, have we pushed the user experience aside too far? My prediction is that we’re going to see some pendulums swing as websites take a greater interest in the online experience they provide to their audience.

Click here to download the full infographic [PDF].

Click here to download the full infographic [PDF].
Learn how to get social login and sharing on your site.

Embed Code:

<img src="http://janrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/infographic-janrain-q1-social-login-trends.png" alt="Social Login and Social Sharing Trends Across the Web" width="540" /></p> <p><a href="http://bit.ly/M8AGgA">Social Login and Social Sharing Trends Across the Web</a> – An infographic by the team at <a href="http://janrain.com">Janrain</a><br />

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.

Social Login Trends for Q1 2012

When it comes to social login, people want choice. While Facebook is the most popular option at 45%, a majority would rather use a different social identity, such as Google, Yahoo! or Twitter.

Facebook’s share of social logins has increased considerably over the past two years, mostly at the expense of Google.  But don’t assume that portends Google’s decline in influence.  With Google+ rapidly scaling users and adoption, it will be interesting to see if it eventually overtakes Facebook again in social login popularity.

As with prior reports, 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 consideration.

Facebook’s popularity for social login on eCommerce websites has declined moderately from 49% to 43% during the past two quarters.  Despite the decrease, it still enjoys significant popularity, which can be partially explained by the explosion of social commerce during the past year.  Increasingly, retailers are offering social shopping experiences on their eCommerce sites that leverage a consumer’s Facebook social graph.  We believe that the opportunity to incorporate friends into the online shopping experience will continue to influence the proclivity to choose Facebook when registering on retail sites.  Yahoo!’s share of social logins on retail sites has plummeted since 2009, mostly at the expense of Google and Facebook.

On media websites, Yahoo! and Google are running strong as the second and third most popular providers.  Despite a modest decline during the past several 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.

It’s also worth noting that Windows Live (Hotmail/MSN), historically a strong performer on entertainment and gaming sites, has experienced a notable decline in share of social logins during the past year.

Social Login Trends for Mobile in Q1 2012

On mobile applications, Facebook and Google lead in popularity, followed by Twitter and Yahoo!.  Twitter’s improvement in popularity on mobile devices could be a result of its OAuth integration with Apple iOS 5 for social login, which has further socialized mobile users to rely on Twitter as an authentication mechanism on portable devices.

Social Sharing Trends in Q1 2012

More than ever, people are sharing comments, purchases, reviews and other content from the web to their social networks. 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).  During the past two quarters, Twitter’s popularity as a sharing destination has increased at a more prominent rate than other social networks.

Social Profile Data That Can Be Accessed

Social login opens the door to collecting a rich amount of profile data from a user’s social network account. Each social network provides a different set of profile data on their users, which can help speed registration or enable more data-driven marketing and ROI from personalization and improved segmentation.   Here is a look at the profile data contained within a social profile that users can choose to share with your site:

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 source of 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.

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.