[stephenr]

They offer a 3 month trial of BrowserStack (who also have a free trial, but presumably its less than 3 months?) but it requires Facebook login.

When I tweeted to @ie to ask why this is the case, @browserstack replied saying "Just a way to manage sign-ups especially duplicate".

How is it possible that companies like Microsoft and Browserstack, both of whom have existing "signup" functionality, and one of whom already operates an "online profile" system, require Facebook for a trial like this?

[eli]

Because it's a pain to set up a new Facebook profile. Presumably enough of a pain that people won't be willing to do it every 3 months to avoid paying for BrowserStack.

[dmethvin]

I'd assume that as well. I have collected several Microsoft IDs by way of Hotmail/live.com/outlook.com but I only have one Facebook account.

[stephenr]

Not that much of a pain if you don't need to develop apps with it.

[UnoriginalGuy]

I don't have a Facebook account, so while I think the concept of Browser Stack is awesome, I'm going to skip this entirely since setting up a Facebook account just to use it pisses me off...

[hessenwolf]

I didn't sign up to instagram and spotify last weekend because they seemed to want my facebook details.

No, I do not want my music taste and photographs automatically shared with a random selection of friends, strangers, and businesses. There is a slight difference between who I am and who I want other people to think I am.

[bahularora]

I think you can change app feed settings to "only me" then only you can see the feeds.

[hessenwolf]

Oh, I can change them, for sure. And then they can change them without telling me, and share everything anyway.

Imagine my surprise at finding out that youtube was sharing my history. Along with my mostly technical interests, there was fails and a specific interest in philology!

[charonn0]

This sort of thing pisses me off too. Until/unless a widely-adopted global user uniqueness authentication system is developed[1], we'll continue to see web properties use third-parties to provide a semblance of this utility.

For the moment, Facebook is rapidly cornering the market. Which is too bad, in my opinion.

[1]: Random Idea: Maybe ISPs can start issuing randomly-generated cryptographic key pairs along with an IP address. This way, a particular IP + public key would be distinguishable from the next user who gets that IP address, but would not be traceable to a particular customer (not any more so than an IP by itself), and would be used only until the customer requests a new IP.

The key would provide IP address authentication ("this IP has not been assigned to someone new since the public key is the same as before.") This would all happen transparently beneath the application layer (perhaps as an extension to TCP), so existing app-layer protocols could use it OotB. Other handy features might include detecting if a machine with a static IP has had its connection interrupted since your last visit.

Each keypair could be signed using the ISP's own private key as a protection against being spoofed. Customers would be asked to choose some sort of password/phrase/favorite number/etc. as part of their service signup, which would then be used by the ISP as part of the seed for keygen system.

[technotarek]

Yes, their response sounds like evasion. Nothing is free. Having said that, their service is pretty good (based on the original 30 minute 'free trial').

[justnorris]

So what ? I'll enjoy my 3 months free trial anyway. Since when is "Login with Facebook" a bad thing ?

[stephenr]

It's the only option they support. Some people choose to have no association with Facebook, for a variety of reasons (usually privacy related) - and now Microsoft says "hey that Microsoft ID we made you create for all our other services, it doesn't work here!"