Ask HN: Should I implement Sign in with LinkedIn? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should I implement Sign in with LinkedIn?

4 pointssnake1173 comments

I am building an application for prospective and professional writers. I was thinking of using both login with Facebook and LinkedIn for signing in. I was thinking of LinkedIn especially because of the level of professionalism it could bring. However, when I looked at stats about LinkedIn, its apparent that it is nowhere near as big as other social platforms, like Twitter. How should I go about this? Should I emphasize on the philosophy of the company or what the service actually offers in its current state? I don't want to offer so many methods of signing up or logging in; ideally two at most. Thanks in advance.

View on HN

If you don't offer your users the option of creating a "local" account, I can guarantee you I won't be using it. LinkedIn is horribly invasive if you don't put it in a very strong cage.

I should've mentioned that I was still going to give the option of creating a local account. I definitely don't want to completely rely on third party login systems for my application, I just want to give the option to users. Do you mind elaborating on how LinkedIn can be overly invasive? Are Facebook and Twitter as invasive?

I've recently experienced a flood of "please connect with me" messages. They seem to come in waves. I generally contact the people I know OOB. Sometimes they initiated the request, and sometimes they did not. I assume LinkedIn's app is sucking up contact lists from phones, probably by opaque permission.

Now linked in is asking me to invite people to join LinkedIn, who are not yet members. I assume these "leads" also come from contact lists sucked up by their app.

I was asked to invite a mailing list to join. I belong to a private mailing list, which has a name. I assume that list's address was sucked up by the app.

To the people at LinkedIn who implement this stuff and enable this kind of behavior, faking communication from people who did not actually inititate it: Really? That's what you do for a living?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com