Driven by a strong preference for convenience and a limited wariness about privacy, U.S. consumers have sharply increased their use of social logins to connect with digital sites and apps in the last two years, according to a Gigya survey released today.
Seventy-seven percent of consumers have logged into websites and mobile apps using social logins, a 45% increase over a 2012 survey also conducted by Gigya, a Mountain View-based digital consumer management firm and one of the leading providers of social sign-in plugins.
The results of the poll aren’t terribly surprising. Really, no one likes to fill out cumbersome registration forms, a fact supported by the answers Gigya received in the poll of 2,000 U.S. adults ages 18 to 55 taken during July. Among those who use social sign-ins, 53% said they do so because they don’t want to spend time filling out registration forms and 47% say they do it because they don’t want to create or remember another user name and/or password.
The majority of the respondents said they were willing to use social logins despite some wariness about how their data would be used. More than 40% of those polled believed that sites would: sell my data (46.6%), post on my wall without my permission (41.8%) and spam my social network friends (40.8%). And 85.6% said data collection companies should be more heavily regulated by government institutions.
That’s hardly a ringing endorsement for the system and uncertainty about privacy and use of data was cited as a major reason for choosing not to use a social login to register with a given site.
Those worries aside, a significant majority — 65.5% — of respondents said they use social logins either “whenever it is an option” or “often.” That’s a big jump from the 35% who answered the same in Gigya’s 2012 survey.
“It’s clear that consumers today have reached a threshold where convenience is king.”
“It’s clear that consumers today have reached a threshold where convenience is king,” said Gigya CEO Patrick Saley in a release. “Our study shows that social login use is becoming essentially ubiquitous and is becoming a standard for consumers when interacting with brands on web and mobile. “Yet the need for transparency into how information is being collected and used has not diminished. Consumers are willing to share information if they know what it is being used for and how it will benefit them.”
Gigya recommends that marketers with websites using social registration plugins to be forthcoming with how they plan to use consumer data. Here are Gigya’s best-practice suggestions (which are part of the company’s SocialPrivacy Certification program):
Data Protection: Do not sell the social profile data of users or their friends to third parties
Friend Protection: Do not send private messages to a user’s friend(s) unless prompted by the user
Social Publishing: Do not publicly post to a user’s social network account on behalf of a user without the user’s explicit permission
Email Opt-In: Do not use personal information obtained via social login to send newsletters or promotional emails unless users have opted-in to such notifications
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