“Yahoo is poised to let people use their Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. identities to sign on to Yahoo,” says this article from earlier today.
In fact Yahoo has let users create new accounts on Flickr with their Google credentials since last summer. It’s been tested as part of an internal Yahoo project to spur user signups. A lot of people apparently bail out during the account creation process at various Yahoo sites. Part of the problem is that the process is lengthier than it needs to be because you’re also effectively signing up for a Yahoo email account, too. Even if you never use that account. There’s so much spam with email that there are a lot of extra steps with account creation.
We’ve heard from sources that test has worked spectacularly well. After the addition of Google, account signups have increased by more than 20%, apparently, which is more than 10,000 new accounts daily that they otherwise would have lost. There’s no promotion of this, that extra 20% is just from higher conversions during the signup process. Fewer people are bailing out.
Facebook comes next, an obvious step. Which should increase conversions a whole lot more.