Social login: personalisation mustn't be at the expense of trust

Given the option, consumers increasingly use their social media profiles to login to their favourite sites, including ecommerce, travel, media and education sites. New statistics from Gigya show that people are predominantly choosing to do so with their Facebook profile. 76% of users who log in socially use their Facebook identities on ecommerce sites, while 59% use it to log in to travel and hospitality sites. Facebook is also still the king of mobile social login, as 63% of people use their mobile phones to log in to their favourite sites.That's because they don't want to have to register every time they visit one of these sites, particularly when they've already got all their data ready to go at the touch of a button – and most people know that their Facebook profiles have all the relevant information they'd have to provide anyway. For marketers, each time someone logs in through his or her social profile they get a truly rich idea of the person behind the profile, and can personalise their service in a much more appropriate way.However, that doesn't mean that privacy is being violated. Privacy and personalisation don't have to be polar opposites. Social login is a prime example of this, where consumers and brands essentially have a "virtual handshake" where consumers give the brand permission to use certain parts of their data in exchange for the value provided by more relevant marketing, a more personalised site experience or the ability to unlock certain gated content. This process has to be transparent, and current social network permissions actually do a good job of this.The concerns about these leaky mobile phone apps are well founded, and action clearly needs to be taken, but Rovio's chairman needn't cut all ties with advertisers; rather give customers the decision about whether to share their data and a transparent tool to do so. The statistics show that most socially connected consumers seem to recognise that the companies they interact with are using their Facebook preferences and "likes" to improve the service they offer them.Consumers are happy to share their information, but they want to do so on their own terms. The main objective for responsible companies in the wake of this news is to now provide consumers with the option to "opt in" to sharing their data via a social media login, rather than assuming that they are happy to do so. In other words, they need to stick out their hands before they can expect people to shake them.(theguardian.com)ANN.Az