Social sign-in has many benefits for both marketers and web users. It enables marketers to target more effectively with profile data and increase engagement levels. Users prefer it because it allows them to select sign-in of their choice, verifies user ID and it is a simple and easy process.
According to a recent study on social network IDs used by web users to sign-in to websites to share content, conducted by Janrain, Facebook surpassed Google to become the top choice for social sign-in the first quarter of 2011. In the last quarter of 2010, Google was still the top choice being used by 38% internet users and Facebook ranked second with 27%.
According to the latest report, Facebook is the most popular choice for sign-ins being used by 35% consumers, while Google ranks second with 31%. Other networks make up the rest with Yahoo! at 13%, Twitter at 7%, Windows Live at 6% and others (like AOL, LinkedIn and Myspace) at 8%. Twitter, although used by only 7% consumers for social sign-in, is used to share 32% of the total content distributed by users through social networks. This indicates that consumers use it extensively for content sharing although they are not comfortable in using it as their principal social login.
Facebook is the most preferred content sharing platform and accounts for 58% of the total content shared via social media. Twitter accounts for 32% content, LinkedIn 13%, Yahoo! 9% and Myspace 4%. Social sharing is important for company internet marketing as it spreads word of mouth. Being equally beneficial for both marketers and consumers, social sign-in is likely to gain further popularity in near future.