Recently we have introduced Facebook Connect — a new way to connect your Facebook and Wikidot accounts, which simplifies the sign-up and sign-in processes. Today, after 11 days, we think it would be nice to share some numbers and show how many people actually use it. And we have some improvements too!
| Total number of Wikidot users | 918,633 |
| No. of all users with a connected Facebook account | 768 |
| No. of users who added a Facebook account to their existing Wikidot account | 171 |
| New user accounts in the last 11 days | 4,555 |
| New users signed up using a Facebook account | 597 |
| Facebook Connect sign-up ratio | 13% |
Pretty good. About 1 out of 8 new users choosechose Facebook Connect over the traditional sign-up form, which is something we have been expecting. But still we hope the number will increase in the future.
And we have added some improvements. Many of you pointed out that users should have an option to use a profile image on Wikidot that is different thatto the one you use on Facebook. This is even more important for those who already have a Wikidot account and want to connect with Facebook, because after connecting their Facebook image would be used.
Not any more — today we have fixed this problem. Facebook newcomers can now add a separate profile image to their Wikidot account, and those who already have a profile image and want to connect with Facebook can keep their current one.
One more improvement — behind the scenes we have switched to Amazon's CloudFront to serve profile images, which means that the images should load much faster from 20 CloudFront locations in US, Europe, Asia and South America, taking some load off Wikidot's servers.
Thanks for adding the option to use a different profile image and I'm happy that images will load faster :D
Great to see Facebook integration. But what about Twitter?
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Personally, I think Facebook has way too much personal info as it is. I'd never, ever allow an account to be tied to it. I even block all third-party cookies from it, and have for quite a while even before the recent debacle about its cookies being able to track your movements across sites without even being logged in.
While I trust Google more than I do Facebook, I don't think I'd trust them with a connection either.
Good to hear about the FB stats and the improved features. Facebook Connect is great for us and in time we will bring a lot more users across to Wikidot when we finally migrate our many Facebook members across to our wikidot sites when we are ready to launch sometime over the next year. Thanks again for this long awaited feature.
Ye Olde - Creator and Chief Admin of www.music-industrapedia.com (Global Music Industry Directory & Encyclopedia) hosted on Wikidot.
I know that adding Facebook Connect is what all the cool websites are doing these days, but…
What if Facebook decides they don't like Wikidot, and they pull the plug? Do all those Facebook profile pictures just vanish? Would you have any recourse? Does Facebook even have a customer service department (with real people ready to take your call)?
This is a very good question, and we did have it in mind when deciding to go the Facebook Connect (FC) way. Here is what we think:
1. FC is not obligatory, and as you can see most people share your opinion and do not use FC. Personally I would not use FC-only for some critical stuff I am doing, but I happily use it for non-critical services. At Wikidot you have a choice.
2. Even if you sign-up using FC, you can still set your password, which gives you an independent way to log in. Just your user name and password.
3. When a person signs-up using FC, we require Facebook to pass his/her email address. This way we have an independent way to contact the user, even if Facebook fails for some reason. The user himself can also use "recover password", which will de facto set a password for the Wikidot account and make it independent of Facebook.
I hope this helps. At no point we rely entirely on Facebook, but still we think that using FC is a great shortcut for many people and saves them time and effort of thinking about yet another internet identity and password.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
Is there a chance you will be implementing the Twitter connect soon? I think this would be more useful than the FC
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We were thinking about it, but we want to see how FC rolls out.
Why do you think Twitter would be more useful?
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
Because as a pro designer, I know in the design community it is one of the most useful tools to log into a website with.
I'm not 100% sure but I think more people would rather use a Twitter Connect, I know I would. With Twitter, people are more active when it comes to status updates and they seem to use it more than facebook (well at least updating their status). I figure since we all have the "Tweet my Wiki" feature. The Twitter Connect should fit right in, plus this should definitely bump up my members a bit :)
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It kinda depends on the target audience. I would say that 90% of my school friends don't have a Twitter account. As a general statement, kids prefer Facebook over Twitter.
Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)
Agreed, I'd just prefer a Twitter connect because it's great for getting your business out there. I figure if Wikidot would implement a Twitter Connect, that plus a Facebook Connect are both easy and great ways to set up a Wikidot profile, or a site profile in general.
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I'd like to put in a word for Google; I have a Facebook account, but rarely post and I don't want t to allow them to mine even more of my data. I have a Twitter account, but never twit. However I do use Google extensively. They mine data as well, but they do it with a smile ;-)
Wikidot don't want a huge number of different options, but I think a cluster of three or four buttons should not confuse users too much.
And if we could have more OAuth as well, whatever that is…
I wish we can +1 posts because I would +1 your post @rurwin. We definitely need a Google Connect as well!
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Thanks for adding the option to use a different profile image and I'm happy that images will load faster :D
Let us think about Twitter. There are three points we are not doing it straight away:
- we think the sharing and social power of Facebook is larger than Twitter (this is disputable)
- Facebook penetration is higher than Twitter (depends on the target audience, I know)
- too many options at once might be too much
However, Twitter is still something we are looking into.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
Glad to hear your looking into twitter, would love to see that one. I agree that too many options at once might be too much.
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Please, please add Twitter to get more user easily log in. Two options are not too many options but add little bit more choices. Have a look at universalsubtitles.org log-in page, they have four and look easy. Thanks in advance for your effort.
fb integration was a great idea, I hope twitter will be next and who knows…maybe Linkedin?
Hey, this is a slight bit off topic. But on the end of your blog post you have the Tweet, Like and +1 buttons.
I want to get these on to my Wiki, but can't seem to get them to work. Any suggestions??
Thanks
You might want to post this over at the community forum at http://community.wikidot.com as that is a better place to answer questions like this.
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
I agree with others that Facebook has too much personal information to connect with Wiki.
But anyway, great job! I think a lot of other people are really going to like this so thumbs up!
Greetings.