+Janrain offered to give us the data early and to get an interview with a member of their team, so I jumped at the chance! I interviewed Janrain's Product Marketing Manager, +Michael Olson, who gave his insight into the numbers Janrain is reporting and what sort of trends we might see going forward:
There's an interesting point in the Quarterly Social Login Trends (above) for Q3 of 2012 where Facebook has been declining steadily and Google+ has been rising almost equally. How likely is it that will continue?
Yeah, I'd certainly be entering the realm of speculation, Cory. My sense is that part of the reason why we've seen Google's popularity really increase during the past five or six quarters since Q3 of 2012 has to do with the emergence of Google+ in continuing to gain more users and not only more users but more people who are using the service, but also Google's push to unify each of the services. So Gmail, Google+, YouTube, Google Play, and the Android family all under the notion of a Google identity. What we're seeing is consumers are placing more affinity, equity, and trust in their Google identity because they're using it for more mission critical services on the web. As a result, to me it's not surprising to see social login preferences sort of follow suit because they're really a reflection of which social networks do we place the most affinity in our online identity.
In the Music Sites Login Trends (above), Janrain shows a boost with Google+. Why do you believe Facebook has continually dominated in this area?
So within the music umbrella, music sites, like all the other industries that we sample, Facebook does have a substantial lead. I think a lot of it has to do with the demographic profile of the people who are on Facebook. The ties and close integration with services like Spotify and even Pandora that really has encouraged you to integrate your profile to enrich your experience with those services. I think there's been a close alignment historically, so you see people more predisposed to want to use their Facebook profile to connect on a music artist web site. Music is something that's inherently social. Like when I discover an interesting band, my first inclination is to share with other people and my friends. Whether that's either to brag about my own music preferences or just to share the goodness with other people I care about. I think there's a natural alignment with Facebook within that industry segment.
Now, I will contrast that with what we saw in the last quarter was that Facebook's share of preference on music sites declined about ten percent. That's the largest single quarter drop that they've seen on any type of site that we've sampled. Google+ was, along with Twitter, the primary beneficiary. This is again entering the realm of speculation, but I wonder if Google's surge in popularity within this category is correlated with the increased push from the company to really unify all their services under Google identity. You have a lot of people who are active users on YouTube that use it to listen to music, discover new artists, and watch live concerts for example via YouTube and commenting and sharing that rich media essentially via their Google identity because you've got to establish a Google identity to participate on the YouTube site and create playlists and favorites. I think that what we're seeing is on music sites, for example, people are starting to better associate their Google identity with something that they use for music discovery. So that then translates naturally to the official web sites of music artist when a person's looking to interact on those sites.
Follow-up question: How do you think the Google Play Music and SoundCloud's new share integration with Google+ will affect this?
I think it's all positive. The best analogy of SoundCloud and Google+ is the way Facebook has integrated with services like Spotify. The more closely aligned that the social networks become to services that we as consumers use every day creates a natural affinity from a consumer standpoint. It wasn't surprising that Facebook, early on, jumped out with a big advantage within this particular industry segments, music sites, based on their close integration with services as Spotify. I think it will help Google become even more competitive within the entertainment and music sites. This will further the notion that this isn't a one horse race. There's no one social network to really rule them all.
What do you think Google, Facebook, or any other providers could do to increase the usage of their social login platform?
I'll start by saying that the social networks and the online identities are all doing a really good job of promoting that option today. They're all offering open API's and technologies for developers or for companies that want to work with a technology partner like Janrain to implement social login and make the process easy. So from a technology standpoint, I think they're already doing the right thing, which is making the technology simple for companies to deploy on their websites so that it's out there. So consumers can see it and interact with it every day.
We know from some research that we've commissioned that ninety percent of consumers have encountered social login before at least once in their lives and we know that half of consumers use social login. I think it's becoming more and more the ubiquitous standard way to create an account on a website and sign in on a website. So that's all very positive. I think the other answer to your question is the best thing that these social networks to continue to promote adoption of their services for social login is just to educate consumers of the value and benefits of the process. Using your social ID to register on a site because it will make the sign up process faster and you won't have to fill out a registration form from scratch or remember yet another username and password for every site you visit. And then [social networks] also being really transparent with users on privacy and what social profile data about that consumer they can choose to share with the website and how the data will be used. I think that level of transparency and openness with consumers will really help facilitate increased utilization.
Do you believe Facebook will ever be able to pass 50% with the other competition out there especially from Google?
That's a great question, Cory. Facebook did eclipse fifty percent; at least certainly across all of our customers which represents a very large percentage of websites that are out there, back in Q3 of 2012. Since then they've slipped a shade under the majority. They came in at forty-five percent of share of preference in Q4 of 2013. I think it will become increasingly difficult for one social network to really own this market. The reason for that is because we as consumers [aren't using just] one social network. We're all using various social networks to project different parts of our personality or to project different personas for ourselves. I personally use Facebook to interact with close friends or family. I use LinkedIn really to maintain my professional identity and to interact with coworkers and colleagues. I use Twitter to follow influencers, read about topics that are interesting to me, and share my opinions more broadly and publicly. I use Google+, for example, [because it] let's me do both of what Facebook and LinkedIn do. I can organize my social graph into circles and the content I share in the circles to use it as a platform to use it with friends as well as colleagues. So most of us as consumers are using multiple social networks; not just one. We're using them in different ways, and I think the result that that makes it increasingly difficult for any one network to own the social login market. Consumers' preference tends to be so varied based on the type of sites their visiting.
Your Business-To-Business Sites Social Login Trends chart (above) shows Google+ caught up to LinkedIn in Q3 of this past year while Facebook shows a decline. How much do you think this will influence businesses' social media strategies?
I think it has a big influence on a company's broader social media strategy. If I know that I'm a business-to-business (B2B) company and I know the majority of the people signing and creating an account on my website are doing so via Google+, LinkedIn, or Facebook identity, that's great insight to my social media marketing team to better resources and efforts into building out a stronger presence on any one of those networks. In a hypothetical example, if a vast majority of my customers were logging in to my website with their LinkedIn identity, that tells me that I've got an audience that has a special affinity for LinkedIn, and that's probably where my social media marketing team are spending the bulk of their efforts both from a social advertising perspective to drive awareness and organically getting more people to follow my company and interact with my brand on LinkedIn and drive more referral traffic back to my site or mobile application. I think one of the interesting angles for these trends is thinking more broadly on how it can influence your social media strategy at large.
Janrain has partnered with a lot of big name companies. How are you looking to go forward with expanding and giving those companies the best online presence?
Janrain really got our start in 2005 helping solve the challenge that many companies had which was "how do I acquire more customers online and collect better information about those consumers without sacrificing conversation rates?" The challenge from a company's standpoint was people have too may username/password combinations, and no one likes filling out long registration forms and then being required to remember yet another login. So social login really solved that problem, which is helping with customer acquisition online and helping companies recognize consumers as they visit the site and log in. Where Janrain is also really focused on helping customers is helping out clients truly know who their consumers are, who the people are who are visiting their web site so they can personalize every single interaction with them. It's all about once you get someone to register to sign up on your web site, recognizing who they are and then helping our client collect a lot of this accurate customer profile data via registration via social login so they can ultimately better segment their customers. Offer a more personalized experience on their web site, improve targeting, and ultimately it's all about better serving their customers. That's really where we're increasingly focused on helping our clients solve that challenge.
Check out Janrain's full trend report for the rest of the juicy social login trends. Also, make sure to check out our article on the 6 steps to set up Google+ Sign-In if you want to implement it for your website or app.
What in-depth analysis would you like to see in the coming months as Google+ continues to rise in social logins? How often do you use them personally? Let us know in the comments!