Gigya Report: Facebook Still Dominates Social Logins But May Be Fading A Bit

The social networking giant has been dropping slightly since mid-2015 -- while Google has been gaining.

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From the new Gigya report

From the new Gigya report

Facebook is still the king of social logins on websites worldwide, but its dominance may be on a slow decline.

That’s the big takeaway in the “Landscape of Customer Identity” Q4 report from customer identity management provider Gigya, out today.

Although Facebook credentials in Q4 account for 62 percent of all website social logins, the Gigya stats indicate that the social network peaked at 66 percent in second quarter of last year and has been slightly declining since then. But Google’s is 24 percent — and it has increased slightly over the last two quarters. In the second quarter of last year, Google was at 20 percent.

The other social logins were Twitter at seven percent, Yahoo at four percent, LinkedIn at one percent and Other at two percent.

A social login is when you employ your username and password from a given social network to log into another site. Depending on how your preferences are set, at least some of your profile is then made available to the other site.

“It is likely that Facebook’s decline can be attributed to the rise of Google’s social login adoption,” Gigya communications manager Reeyaz Hamirani told me.

“Google’s increase over the last two quarters may be attributed to the company’s unification of its services” under one unique ID per user, he said, covering subscribers to Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive and Google+.

“It is also possible that Facebook hit a saturation point once it peaked at 66 percent in Q2.”

By contrast, he said, the biggest surprise in the report is that “not only has Yahoo failed to cross the five percent mark for three consecutive quarters,” but that it has completely disappeared as a social identity provider for consumers on mobile applications or ecommerce properties.

Speaking of mobile, Facebook’s social login share on mobile apps grew by four percent in the fourth quarter, which apparently came from the two percent lost by both Google and Twitter. Facebook is huge on mobile, accounting for 80 percent, which Gigya said is helped in part by increased privacy controls.

The findings were obtained from samples of Gigya’s 700+ customers. The company has been issuing these quarterly reports for the last three years.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Barry Levine
Contributor
Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

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