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Answers.com Now Only With Facebook and Own Login
CptnHarlock writes "Today the registered users of Answers.com received an email informing them that the site has ended support for Yahoo, Twitter, Google, or LinkedIn as a way to sign into their site. Facebook is the sole external way left to log in. A local login and password were generated and sent by email and the old (non-Facebook) logins deactivated. Score another one for Facebook.com in the login consolidation wars."
The only reason I can imagine sites are doing this is very short-term thinking. When you make Facebook your only way to log in, you make yourself dependent on Facebook, which let's not forget, could fall out of favor just as quickly as Myspace, or Geocities before that.
It's a precedent that other sites should be afraid to set at all. They should be avoiding centralized login services like the plague. The current system is the best, where the only point of centralization is an email address, because email is 100% free and open (for now, although port 25 blocking and spam blocklist maintainers are threatening that)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A crappy scraper site that republishes Wikipedia's content will no longer allow me to use an account I don't have from a provider I don't use!
Well, they never really gave me good answers anyway.
Oh the irony, captcha was totality
Answers.com is an ad-heavy content farm. Why would anyone want a login there?
Is there a [real dollar] cost? I would like to know.
Now, everything you do on Answers.com will be tracked, recorded, and logged to your Facebook account, which is also routinely furnished to the NSA and other government agencies to help them figure out how best to trample on your rights.
OK, so answers.com goes on the list of sites I will continue to not use.
WALSTIB!
A lot of people appear to have replaced Expert S-ex Change with Stack Overflow and the other Stack Exchange sites. So when "lrn2google" fails me due to the synonym problem, and I have a question about a topic not covered by one of the Stack Exchange sites, which general question-and-answer forum do you recommend?
FarmVille is an ad-heavy virtual farm. Why would anyone want a login there?
Given that most network assets registered under facebook and related domains resolve to 0.0.0.0 on my network, this would seem like a counterproductive strategy.
In other words, making your site dependent on the availability of a function offered by facebook is not a good business strategy - more of a lousy exit strategy. Oh well, answers.com belongs in the bin anyway.
--frank[at]unternet.org
No love for Facebook. I've never joined and won't join just because they're the only choice for some web site of questionable use. Twitter is my social network choice, because they are more open; my words, good or bad, aren't hidden from non-members.
republishes Wikipedia's content
Which in a few cases can be a good thing.
Let's not overhype what's occurring here. FTA: "You now have two ways you can sign in and stay with us and keep your contributions and earned badges." They're only dropping support for other single sign on type logins, probably all of which had been provided by a 3rd party like Gigya. Standard old-fashioned site registration/login is still supported. I work for a major TV network website; we have single sign on via Facebook and also offer signup via the rogue's gallery of Twitter, LinkedIn, mySpace, etc in addition to a standard old-fashioned signup. Literally 99% of our signups come from either Facebook or standard registration. We'll probably drop support for the others as well, as they're not worth the dev resources or the fee we pay to Gigya.
Probably a behind the scenes deal between answers.com and FB. Advert revenue sharing perhaps, or free data for FB to sell to their advertisers.
now i have to use that site with zero logins instead of my usual zero.
One would have thought that the majority of readers would have long since blocked ads. I block everything, and I do mean everything. Between my hosts file, Firefox add-ons and about:config, I see nothing but a clean Internet. Ads used to be just annoying, but now they track you, especially Flash-based ads. So I just cannot risk it. I already pay to use the Internet. I'm not paying with my privacy.
If you are on Linux you can still use Flash without it tracking you, as nothing escapes the event horizon of /dev/null
rm -rf .adobe .macromedia /dev/null .adobe /dev/null .macromedia
ln -s
ln -s
I wonder how much Facebook paid for this privilege?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I deleted my facebook and will not re-create it, so I guess these sites are off limits to me forever. Seems like a good business model
A lot of sites are doing this (LAtimes is Facebook only) the reason is to track dissent and document every comment made by people then associate it with the actual person, so "how to make thermite" question you asked out of curiosity becomes your downfall at a later date, made illegal and prosecuted retroactively or just used to smear you if you get involved in politics in any way or even just a little bit too "outspoken".
This is another step in the ongoing move to a controlled Internet.
If you have a Facebook account, first I have to say you're a tool, second do you know everyone of your "friends" IRL well enough to go to trial for them?
If not, close your account now.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The summary states that all non-Facebook logins have been deactivated.
That is not true. One does not need a Facebook account to log into Answers.com.
I've been using a greasemonkey script to purge these crap sites from google results for forever. Why anyone would use this site, let alone need an account, is beyond me.
From a business point of view, especially so if they generate their funds through ads, why cut your userbase? Your ads are just going to be seen even less.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
.... Answer.com ;)
A local login and password were generated and sent by email and the old (non-Facebook) logins deactivated.
So... without asking users they went through the trouble of handing all personal data required to create a Facebook profile and email the new Facebook profile login info to those users? Is this what happened?
Do I have to join Facebook to get an answer to that?
Why?
I tried. I tried really hard.
Why must I be part of a social network in order to log in to a non-social-networking site? Sorry, not worth the hassle to set up a facebook account just to get access to another website...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
People actually log into answers.com?
I'm beginning to think Facebook is the mark of the beast.
Proverbs 21:19
IS there any way to have hundreds of facebook accounts? I'd be fine with using facebook as a universal ID system if I can also maintain different logins of different sites rather than linking them all to one facebook ID. I don't actually use face book-- indeed I detest it, but that's another story.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I have a Facebook account that I *only* use to allow old friends to locate me. I never stay logged in on my account. But, I also like answering programming questions from newbies as a bit of a pay it forward effort. No way will I leave my Facebook account logged in for this crap. I foresee this decision being reversed pretty quickly...unless Facebook dropped some insane amount of cash on them.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
to know the percentage of Facebook logins against standard ones, if you have that figure.
I remember when someone said to me that "You HAVE to get a MySpace account". That was in around 2005. I didn't create one. I also don't have a FB account. So, what I'm finding is that more and more things online are REQUIRING to have a FB account. This is very wrong for a few different reasons that don't need to be explained, as they are so obvious. As an example, I tried to send a message to my local PBS station and discovered that their only means of communication was via FB, and had ditched email. I couldn't believe it. I'm a contributing member, yet I couldn't communicate with them unless I did it via FB. Of all organizations, I would imagine that a PBS station would see the irony in that.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Nowadays with things like OpenId and Disqus, it's very easy for a site to allow users to customize what provider they go through for a login. Restrictions like this seem just plain silly.
Need any dad jokes?
And any polls on your site will be even more biased since smarter people don't use FB logins anywhere else. I've seen a survey, it must be true.
My router blocks access to facebook.com and a few other *facebook* domains. That means a few content providers do not work for me. That's fine. I'm wealthy and spend money ... at other places than those connected to facebook or twitter or google.
OTOH, as a TV web-publisher, you need the ignorant masses to visit your website, not people like me and my friends.
Your comments were a bit harsh RE not having friends. Not having a FB account means nothing. Some people don't see or feel the need to have one despite having any number of friends. After all, there is no expectation that one ever have a FB account. It's a choice like eating at one restaurant over another. IMHO, FB is a sheeple farm, plain and simple. I'd much rather hang out with friends over cigars and wine, not virtually. I also rather despise the lack of privacy one has using FB, regardless of settings. Social networking has set the bar for a more transparent society, Not everyone likes this. I rather like my privacy, actually, and if and when I choose to share it should be on my express and sole terms.
If services start using Facebook as sole login credential - which Answers.com apparently hasn't done, but Spotify, for instance, has - what's there to prevent millions of users to register accounts like bjsjfo88803 or e93u9f39f for the sole purpose of logging in to other sites? I already do this for Youtube.
You don't see any difference between games and informational sites?
I'm not the only person who doesn't.
When I bought my first computer in the summer of 1978, an Apple ][+, I had several other makes to choose from, each running their own OS and offering their own peripheral device cards. When IBM released their "PC" they included a disk operating system (DOS) which was a subset of Unix. There were several versions of DOS but the best one was DRDOS. Eventually, the other computers and operating systems faded away, and only Apples and PCs, and their clones, were left, along with DOS and other operating systems, which included Linux. The rich chose Apple. Everyone else bought PCs. After they bought their PC they purchased the Operating System they wanted to run on it. I chose OS/2. Later, in 1997, I installed Win95 but after five disastrous months with it I discovered Linux.
There was a time when makers of peripheral devices for PCs thought it normal to include CPUs on their cards to handle IO so that they would be compatible with PCs running any DOS, OS/2, Linux or the others. You could buy a Hayes modem and plug it into the serial port of any computer, regardless of the OS it ran, and it would work. Printers hooked to the parallel printer port allowed them to work the same way. The OS didn't matter.
Then, Microsoft convinced modem makers to leave the CPU off of their devices and cards, and to rely on the Windows OS for the cards control. Thus was born the "WinModem". WinPrinters soon followed, blocking out large segments of the market who, at the time, were not using any Microsoft OS. This was before Microsoft acquired their 95% desktop market share. Leaving the CPU and intelligence off of their cards, but not lowering their prices, PC OEMs realized a larger profit by using the CPU on the computer replace the CPU on their cards, and letting Windows control the card. TO make things easy Microsoft at first began paying PC OEMs to install Windows on their computers. As Windows market share grew the amounts Microsoft paid dropped. When Windows acquired desktop dominance and PC OEMs were not pre-installing any other OS except Windows, Microsoft began requiring PC OEMs to pay for a copy of Windows for each PC they shipped. MS also instituted secret contracts with the PC OEMS which prohibited them from selling any PC without Windows pre-installed. The MS-DOJ trial eliminated that kind of contract but the PCs became commodities and their prices dropped into the basement. For several years now, most PC OEMS make a profit on the ad rebates they receive from Microsoft. Microsoft's monopoly has cost consumers billions in overcharges and restrained software innovation. However, slowly and surely the PC market is digging itself out from under Microsoft's thumb. Unable to trap the tablet/smartmphone market share the way they did the PC market share, the WP7 is sliding away from 15% and is seeking the 1% market share level. Microsoft is making up for it by taxing Android phone makers (and Linux) on the strength of unproven IP claims against companies that find it cheaper to pay the "tax" than to fight them in court.
If Facebook pays websites to require readers to create Facebook accounts to log into their comment sections do you think the "leveraging" will stop there? Those that keep several log in options, or their own, won't be receiving Facebook money and so will face more economic difficulties than those who take the money. (Sound like WinModem and WinPrinter makers versus those who didn't? How did that work out? With Microsoft owning a monopoly on the PC OS market. It cost consumers dearly.). In these economically tough times poor financing, or not being able to afford classier sites and services, will make independent sites less able to compete against sites taking Facebook money. Sooner or later, Facebook will acquire a monopoly on blogging access, and if the movie about the owner of Facebook has taught you anything it has shown you how ruthless and greedy he can be. He won't stop with the log ins. After they get hooked on the Facebook mon
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Bye answers.com. Go die now.
You are not required to use Facebook to login. You can login using your username and password. However, you can no longer click the Yahoo, Twitter, Google, or LinkedIn icons to instantly login. Facebook is the only alternative to using your username and password. Facebook is NOT the only login option.
They're worthless anyway ... all mash-ups.