I have to say I am a bit surprised that so many people seem to be upset about the Facebook signup.
Personally I love the fact that I can use FB, as I dont' really care that much about my facebook account.
Anyone got any theories on why that is?
Personally I love the fact that I can use FB, as I dont' really care that much about my facebook account.
Anyone got any theories on why that is?
When a user goes onto Quora they are looking for information. Then, when they see the FB connect button, that goal of finding info suddenly becomes related to social relationships. Now the user has to switch mental contexts and think about the social impact of their decision. That invokes an emotional response when all the user wanted to do was quickly find an answer to a question (or at least explore a site that might have this answer).
I've done user tests with FB connect buttons. I've seen users actually pull their hand off the mouse and take pause when the button appears. It invokes a powerful emotional response in some users.
Now I'm not saying these issues are present in Facebook Connect, but I don't have the time to find out and I don't want to gamble that everything will be dandy in the future, especially with a company so removed from ethics as Facebook.
When you name a new product using your old and renowned brand (like Facebook Connect using Facebook), both positive and negative karma is inherited from the old brand. This also may explain why some don't like FB Connect.
And, if you use another company's product (like with Quora and FB Connect), you risk inheriting the consequences of its negative karma as well.
For others, Facebook is a very strong online representation of their actual real-life identity. They joined when they entered college. It became THE platform for staying in touch with friends from home and new friends on campus. Photos on Facebook catalog their entire lives from that point onward. They have literally more on Facebook than they do off of it.
Asking these types users to Connect with Facebook is no different than asking them to login to sites with real information only. It's akin to requiring HN posters to use real names for usernames, real contact info, include real pictures in their accounts, etc. This is something the vast majority of HN would not accept.
Quora wants to be a QA service where every account is linked to something real. That's how they intend to deliver a quality product. That's what makes them different from other QA sites. This obviously slows their growth, but they need to do this to make their site worth anything. Eventually, they will try to convince more and more Facebook users that it's okay to reveal themselves on Quora. Until then, we will just make the Facebook-account-equivalent of spam-only e-mail accounts, and use those for sites like Quora.
It's not a million miles away from asking one of us for our private keys.
I do have a twitter account, but honestly I don't want to use it to sign-up at other pages. If you don't want to handle user names and passwords, use openid.
I ask as I like OpenID enough that at least for my services alpha, I'm only implementing OpenID.