Fwiw:
I hadn't heard of you until I saw this post. I took a look at the website, and having seen that and read the article decided to sign up. I was immediately prompted to sign in with Facebook, and I closed the tab.
I hadn't heard of you until I saw this post. I took a look at the website, and having seen that and read the article decided to sign up. I was immediately prompted to sign in with Facebook, and I closed the tab.
If you'd like you can upvote that feature request here: http://niroka.uservoice.com/forums/136707-general
None of it is insurmountable of course, but using Facebook saves a ton of time and lets you plug into a load of social features at the same time. Yes, some people will reject it but they're a small proportion of the average userbase. A site aimed a HN readers may have a somewhat different proportion, of course.
Think not of the costs you will incur (they are likely to be small anyway, relatively speaking), but the benefits you can provide to your users.
(Mine is that most people do have a Facebook account, or can get one, and you have to have a cutoff on customers' demands somewhere. For example, it probably doesn't make business sense to support non-Facebook users before translating the whole thing into Chinese, Hindi and Russian, at least.)
People just don't have any respect for integrity anymore and they don't even realize that they don't care about it either. And who gives a sh*t about the non-typical user? Adapt to the typical user and just crap on everyone else.
It's all about fast gains and nothing about quality. No one seems to have realized that you can have long-term gains by building decent software.
Also, getting Scottish accents to work in Siri is probably a hassle (where you barely can do it without an accent). Implementing your own registration system is not. You have no excuse for relying on facebook only for logins and I loathe you for it. I might be a minority not worth taking into account but I have a hard time believing you value your users so little that you don't fix your own registration (relying on facebook says something about you and fortunately this is still considered something negative (even though most would use it anyway). Example: spotify).
I agree quality might pay off longer term, but how can you provide quality to your users if you can't put food on your own table? There are always trade-offs; at the end of the day, real artists ship.
In this specific case, well, implementing a reliable registration system is a small hassle, maybe two days work to integrate and do well. I made the Siri example since there are about 6 million Scottish people and its pretty hard for them to change their accents, so it's hardly a minor issue. Ultimately everything is a hassle.
One other thing to consider, if you care about users: Facebook login is more convenient for the average user, so one way not to value your users is not to provide it. Obviously both might be better, but what other feature won't you get around to instead?
TL;DR they are doing the right thing by choosing a good, easy option for the MVP. They are accepting feature requests, so if its important and valuable, they'll do it.
(This is getting long so I should stop, but also, what's so wrong with a Facebook account? Since it has been shown they collect information on people who don't have accounts anyway I can't see any meaningful privacy loss from just getting an account).
This strikes me as bologna, because right now it's meaningless (see: "eventually" make it easier...).
IMO it's perfectly reasonable to say that you didn't want to roll your own registration system.
I like meric's response as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3179759
A social experience might be nice but make sure it's optional, having only facebook as a means to login makes you look fraudulent.