What You Need to Know About Facebook’s New Mobile Logins

Last week at F8, Facebook announced their changes to social logins. Over the next few months, they’ll be testing the new logins with select apps, and opening release to all devs later this year. Below are the key takeaways you need to know. For full details, click here.

• There are now 2 tiers of Facebook’s social login: Anonymous and Normal
• Anonymous allows users to be tracked by a unique user ID through Facebook, without giving any personal data
• “Anonymous use” means anonymous to the apps, but not to Facebook, who will be able to track user behavior and data for users in Anonymous Login
• Users can choose to convert to a normal login if they wish to use social features of an app
• Users can do line by line denials of different FB data permissions
• Facebook now does App Reviews (with a 3-7 day review time), to ensure that apps aren’t asking for any unnecessary permissions
• Only 3 permissions don’t require a review: public profile, user friends, and email
• Apps made before April 30, 2014 are exempt from review until April 30, 2015

The new changes are very favorable to consumers and Facebook, and they’re definitely exciting ones. Facebook will get the great benefit of tracking even more user data, and consumers can feel more secure browsing “anonymously.” However, developers need to determine if this kind of onboarding process will help them or hurt them.

The Pros and Cons

Facebook logins are popular for good reason. They allow developers to get access to Facebook’s extensive user data, users can log in more quickly and painlessly, and consumers are often more likely to trust Facebook with their data than a new app. However, they do have their drawbacks as well.

Asking for data permissions often scares of users, and social logins sometimes only result in marginal increases in sign ups. An over reliance on platforms like Facebook can also prove detrimental, as they did for many users in 2013, locking them out from not only Facebook’s platforms, but many of the users’ other apps who integrated Facebook’s social login.

Integrating Facebook’s new Anonymous Login technology will be a fairly complicated process. Developers will have to determine how to optimize their flow for the changes, and how to
upsell their customers to a normal Facebook login. They’ll also have to test different a bunch of different new use cases, and will likely have to go through a 3-7 day Facebook review process in order to take advantage of the many benefits.

Before you jump at the chance to integrate this new technology, your team should make sure that the benefits outweigh the costs. If you’re not sure if Social or Anonymous Logins are right for your app, there’s a way to see if it hurts or helps using mobile A/B testing.

Stay tuned for the next post where we’ll show you how you can quickly run a test to determine the effectiveness of this new function for your app.