Facebook Accounts for 49% of Social Logins in Q4 2012, LinkedIn Popular for B2B Websites

According to Janrain, Facebook continues to lead the way when it comes to social logins, though Google gained some ground in the fourth quarter of 2012. For websites targeted at business professionals, LinkedIn logins were quite popular.

“If you’re like 87% of people, you have likely come across the option to register at a website using one of your existing social network or email identities,” writes Michael Olson , product marketing manager at Janrain. He adds that more than 2.5 billion people have accounts with a social media and other communications websites, making social logins an easy way to register for sites without filling out forms.

Janrain found that in the fourth quarter, Facebook accounted for 49 percent of social logins, marking the eighth consecutive quarter that the social network led the field of social login options. However, Facebook’s share dipped from 54 percent in the third quarter, while Google saw its share of social logins rise from 25 percent to 31 percent.

Twitter followed with 7 percent of social logins in the fourth quarter, down from its all-time high of 10 percent in the third quarter. Yahoo held steady at 7 percent, followed by Microsoft with 2 percent and others (including LinkedIn and Myspace) accounting for 4 percent of social logins in the fourth quarter.

According to Janrain, as many as 80 percent of business professionals chose to log in with their LinkedIn credentials on B2B websites during the fourth quarter. “A majority of us maintain our professional online identity on LinkedIn, and key profile fields such as our verified email address, company name, job title and industry can be pre-populated on the registration form of a B2B website to dramatically accelerate the sign-up process,” Olson writes.

In September, Silverpop announced a partnership with Janrain to allow website visitors to register for online offers using their LinkedIn identities, offering a channel for B2B marketers to generate leads. As Olson notes, since LinkedIn profiles include information like business email addresses, locations and business relationships.

Janrain notes that in the fourth quarter, Facebook led the way with 68 percent of mobile social logins, followed by Google with 16 percent and Twitter with 11 percent.

By Jason Hahn