Sign In With Twitter

The era of distributed profiles is upon us. I've been offering commenting via Facebook Connect for the past couple months (via the disqus comment system that our firm is an investor in).

Although I have not done a serious analysis of the numbers, I think about 20-30% of all comments come from people using their Facebook profile to log in and comment on this blog. That makes total sense; why create a new profile on disqus when you already have a Facebook profile?

Yesterday, Disqus launched a second option for "remote profiles" with their implementation of "sign in with twitter".

Here's how it looks on the Mashable blog:
Sign in with twitter

The nice thing is Twitter sign in uses their OAuth service and is very simple and easy to use. Check it out and let me know what you think (you need to be logged out of disqus to see the Twitter and Facebook options).

#Web/Tech

Comments (Archived):

  1. Jon Knight

    Quick and easy. Love it.

  2. donpark

    OAuth, Fred. 🙂

    1. fredwilson

      oops. thanks Don. i’ll fix it.

  3. William Mougayar

    Cool…and useful. Now, Zemanta needs to add Related (top) Tweets to their Related Stories.

    1. fredwilson

      Indeed

  4. Vlad

    It’s hard to imagine that this trend will be limited to social networking. I could see similar profile sharing concepts grow within personal finance (banking, investments, etc.), email, etc.

    1. fredwilson

      Totally agree

  5. Niklas Olsson

    very smooth!

  6. Mike Sabat

    Hey Fred, Is disqus able to connect my FB and Twitter accounts? Do they now know – what I tweet about, the blogs I read/comment on and who my friends are?

    1. fredwilson

      Soon, you’ll be able to associate all of these accounts with your disqus profile (or as your disqus profile) including the profiles that large publshers force you to use

  7. Damien Mulley

    I love it

  8. imLOST

    Cool! This really is awesome.

  9. Andrew Weber

    Like this a lot.

  10. Sourabh

    Spiffy. I want to see stats on what % of people represent themselves as themselves on FB vs Twitter vs Myspace —

  11. Adam Berkan

    Every time it gets easier to join the conversation, the conversation gets better.

    1. fredwilson

      Damn straight!

  12. Hauser

    Facebook I still see as a more serious universal sign-in, only because it takes real effort to setup an FB account, they enforce a set of rules that eliminate frivolous profiles (like profiles of cats, etc.), and there are fewer ‘fake’ profiles all over Facebook than there are over Twitter.In general though I like this trend and don’t think Facebook should have a monopoly over it. I’m just not sure Twitter is the worthy contender here.

    1. fredwilson

      We’ll seeI’ll publish some stats in a couple months

      1. Ephraim Luft

        I think that Twitter login and Facebook login provide distinct value propositions. If a site can leverage the social data behind the Facebook login/API, both the user and the site get more value by encouraging users to login through Facebook. However, on blogs and other content-focused sites, it seems like the user gets more value logging in through Twitter as it is another opportunity to expose people to your ideas and give them a reason to follow you.On Facebook, I have over 1,000 friends and want to reduce that number. On Twitter, I have 166 followers and want more people to listen to me.

        1. fredwilson

          I totally agree and that’s why I cut my facebook friends to about 60 ppl

          1. Ephraim Luft

            You told me that you were going to do that when we met in NYC a month or so ago. Congrats on making the jump.Is it possible to analyze where people get their followers from? It would be interesting to understand how your Twitter followers discover you.

          2. fredwilson

            Well I’m not on the suggested user list!

          3. Ephraim Luft

            I meant “…to understand how a person’s Twitter followers discover him/her”…wasn’t referring to you.

    2. kidmercury

      IMO this is a key trend with immense consequences. i think the game is now about which platform is the most trustworthy. in many ways i view this as the real beginning of web 2.0, as i think it is when platforms will need to compete more on the basis of trust rather than on the basis of technology.

  13. Dave Morgan

    Very cool!

  14. Laurent Boncenne

    I’d like to point out that even though the option to choose from which social networking service you log in, probably 8 out of 10 people following blogs have a facebook account, and a twitter account, and a myspace and a google ID and … (insert your favorite social network here); not to mention OpenID.Now what am I supposed to choose, and in what circumstances ? Gravatar was a really good idea, but now it’s more about how we will be able to sort all of our user log-ins in an easy way than having the option to choose.

  15. johnnyA99

    Fredfound something I thought you and other Beatles fans would likeBeatles Tubehttp://www.beatlestube.net/

    1. fredwilson

      Nice! Thanks for the tip

    2. kidmercury

      yes. now they need to add a beatles store, import beatles headlines, create online games about the beatles, and issue beatlebucks as a virtual currency. voila, the business model enabling free media is born!

  16. Thom Kennon

    Would be sweet to subvert FB Connect with this given it’s true Open-ness. Too bad the FB account universe is 5x or so of Twitter’s. At least for now… What about FriendFeed opening this up as the new standard to replace FB Connect? Feeds are richer flowing back there and into threaded streams / groups unlike the single firehose of Twitter.

  17. credhage

    Wow…. That is very nice and very easy. I love it and will try to integrate into our site.

  18. Lloyd Fassett

    I assume my comments under another sign in can’t be all linked together. I like that I can click a name to see multiple comments from one person because its like reading multiple books from the same author. What would be cool is to log into all multiple accounts at one time so I don’t have to choose. Can Disqus build that?

    1. fredwilson

      The next version of disqus profiles will adress this very issueI got a product roadmap from the disqus team last week and I am so excited about where all of this is headed

      1. Lloyd Fassett

        Booma! That, to me, is the big deal. Posting comments with a FB login makes it easier to comment, social graph etc, but if I can do multiple posts at one time it reflects that my social grafts are different between platforms and is useful.However, in my business I was having to build a comment sysytem just because we need the business to have access to those comments too. now I can integrate Disqus and use our own login, plus the others. the first really integrated, open, social comment system I know of. Booma!(btw and fyi signing into Twitter and FB on Disqus didn’t work on my pre-cupcake Android phone)

        1. fredwilson

          Mobile is a big part of their roadmap this year, naturallyI sent them an old blackberry on friday and should also send them my android G1Thanks for the idea!

        2. obscurelyfamous

          Much better mobile support is indeed coming and I’m excited about it. Fred is even more excited about it given he does everything from his phone.Unfortunately, logging in through Facebook Connect or Twitter will be not immediately supported due to the nature and limitations of mobile browsers. I won’t peg anything as impossible though… so we’ll soon see.What mobile support will offer is the ability to read and post comments very smoothly and in an interface you’ll be familiar with.

  19. Facebook User

    Just want to check this out to see how it reflects on my FB profile.

  20. jasonbradfield

    nice and easy – interesting coincidence – earlier today i tweeted about how i wished comment log-in was easier

    1. fredwilson

      Letting people login with whatever profile they want is one way to make it easier

  21. Jan Horna

    Adding a Twitter sign-in option is a good idea, Disqus just brings more people easier sign-ins. Definitely a plus for users.

  22. Eric Wahlforss

    Testing signing in with OAuth+Twitter over at AVC

  23. Neil Smith

    Sounds cool. Checking to see how it manifests.

  24. Neil Smith

    And now FB…

  25. Eric Ferraiuolo

    This is pretty great! And will make me re-consider using Disqus as a commenting system.

  26. lawrence coburn

    Twitter Connect on Disqus.

  27. stran

    wow, it works!

    1. fredwilson

      Wow indeed

  28. Alexander Ainslie (@AAinslie)

    I love that this low-friction SignON/SignIN engagement model is leveling the playing field for applications and services in terms of potential user uptake via SMDC’s (Social Media Distribution Channels – OMG! I think I’ve birthed another 4 letter acronym).I’ve also been following the exemplary work by the @Jainrain chaps (they are the Grandaddy’s in the identity solutions field) on their RPX (& OPX) “unified SignON/SignIN” provisioning services and platform. See: RPX: http://bit.ly/4js7u8 & http://bit.ly/zYsnA & OPX: http://bit.ly/10NSCLNow there is no excuse for any app or service not to incorporate and offer an aggregate interoperable SignON/SignIN identity facility.@AAinslie

  29. Emil Kadlec

    this is great!

  30. Jung Tae Kim

    dfgsdgsdfgsdfgsdgsfdfg

  31. Merijn

    I’m posting a comment on this blog post thing here to try out Twitter Connect.

  32. rachna44gmail

    hey….myself as rachna ….

  33. birdnickoff

    Sign In With Twitter

  34. APEsphere

    OK, I’m sold.