by David A. Yovanno
What a week! As we witnessed at Facebook’s F8 event, things evolve quickly with all the innovation focused on socializing the web. It’s this kind of innovation that gets us excited, as it underscores the value Gigya delivers every day, providing the guidance and technology that ensure these changes benefit our partners’ businesses.
Here’s an outline of the key recent announcements from Facebook, highlights of the benefits to your business, and how they integrate with the Gigya service:
1. Facebook improved the authentication service for your site
The big news: Sites are now allowed to store any data received from Facebook – you are no longer required to delete it after 24 hours. The other providers (Google, Yahoo!, Twitter, Microsoft etc.) already enable this access, so now your business can capture user data no matter which provider a user chooses. When users connect with any provider from your site, you receive their ID, name, photo, email address and other profile information, enabling you to create a rich and permanent account in your system.
Through their new set of APIs, Facebook has also improved the “connect” process. Users can give your site all necessary permissions in a single step. This process is in line with the other providers which Gigya supports, making one-step permission common across all providers now. We are particularly excited that Facebook’s new single permission screen also tells users that by making the connection, they agree to your site’s terms of use. This means that sites no longer need to take a user through a separate ‘terms of use” step and checkbox.
We expect these two changes to significantly increase conversion rates for site registration.
