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Poll: what do you prefer for authentication? (login/pass,Twitter,Facebook?)

8 points by thibaut_barrere ↗ HN
I'm currently working, at my pace, on a website for you, HackerNews users. So I'm wondering: which method of authentication do you prefer (when an authentication is needed)?

Thanks for your time (feel free to add a choice if you prefer).

Please don't forget to also upvote the poll itself if you'd like - I'd really like to build something relevant.

10 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 34.2 ms ] thread
cryptoz
A general note to all:

Note that only 1 in 4 Internet users has a Facebook account. Despite the incredible popularity of the site, if you use Facebook for authentication please provide an alternative method; otherwise you'll shut out 75% of the Internet.

thibaut_barrere
Worth noting, definitely!

In this precise case, I'm building something for hackernews users.

ddemchuk
Then you should probably accept the same login options as Hacker News does to ensure acceptance
thibaut_barrere
I preferred to ask instead of assuming - but yes, the poll agrees with you :)
squidbot
Also it's worth noting that the FB API's are notoriously down quite frequently, so you lose auth at that point, which may not be the user experience you're looking for.
YeeHaw
Definitely a regular login/password using my email address as the username and no validation on the password. I hate when I have to come up with a unique, really complex password for a site I don't use often unless it's a financial site or something.

Whenever I log in with Twitter or Facebook I'm always afraid that whatever I do on that site will be published to my Facebook or Twitter status.

My Google password is unique and precious and I don't want to use it log in to anything but Google.

Travis
Regular login/pass will be your lowest common denominator. I think you have to build that first, and add in facebook/google/twitter afterwards. I'd sign up via either google or via login, but if you didn't offer those options I would not sign up.

My reasons are that I have concerns about the long term outlook for my twitter (potentially frivolous) and facebook (privacy issues) accounts. In fact, I've deleted my facebook. So I don't use either of those to tie accounts together, because it locks me further into the service.

rickr
Why not allow all of them? Janrain Engage may be worth looking into.

http://www.janrain.com/

thibaut_barrere
I used it in the past but didn't feel comfortable with it.

As well, these days you have solutions like omniauth provide much of it without any dependency.

(but thanks for taking the time to suggest it anyway)

sandipagr
I have question on regular login/password. How do you all feel when a registration system emails the activation link to your email address? Genuinely curious.