Gigya Q1 Report: Facebook Extends Social Login Advantage

Facebook continues to dominate the social media login market. Nearly two-thirds of people who use social networks to authenticate their identities on web sites and mobile apps use Facebook, according to customer management firm Gigya’s first quarter report.

Gigya now puts Facebook’s share at 64%, an increase of three percentage points since the fourth quarter of 2014. It’s a familiar refrain. Facebook has improved its share by at least 2 percentage points in five consecutive Gigya reports and now leads Google+ by a record 43 percentage points.

Google+, the only other provider in double digits, has a 21% share, slipping from the 22% it had last quarter. Twitter remained at 6%, while Yahoo dropped 1 percentage point to 5%.

It should be noted that Gigya’s results — pulled from more than 300,000 sites and apps that use the company’s sign-on technology — differ from its competitors. Everyone’s data shows Facebook as the leader, but Janrain’s Q1 report had Facebook’s advantage over Google at 45%-37% and LoginRadius had it 72%-20%. All the companies agree that Facebook is extending its lead.

Gigya’s data showed that Facebook’s surge in mobile logins — 15 percentage points in Q4 of 2014 — has stopped. The social network’s mobile share actually slipped 1 percentage point, but still has an overwhelming lead — 76% to Google+’s 16%.

Facebook’s overall gains were fueled by a strong performance in North America, where it picked up 5 percentage points and now stands at 64%, identical to its global share. Google+ fell 4 percentage points in North America to 20%.

At the category level, Facebook did best in Media and Publishing (5 percentage point increase, 60% share) and Consumer Brands (3 pp, 70% share).

“This growth reinforces the success of Facebook’s efforts, such as enhancements to their line-by-line controls, to empower consumers to have control over what and how data is being shared​ with sites they log into​,” Gigya CMO Dave Scott wrote in an email. “While concerns surrounding privacy and transparency may never fully disappear, significant progress has been made in consumers’ increasing willingness to provide brands access to their personal data, given that the process is convenient, transparent and permission-based.”

Here’s Gigya’s Q1 report infographic:

About The Author

Martin Beck

Martin Beck was Third Door Media's Social Media Reporter from March 2014 through December 2015.