LinkedIn to sign in - would you use it?
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James Cridland posted on Tuesday 7th August 2012 at 23:08Hello there. Finally, LinkedIn have announced that they’re dragging their platform into 2009 by supporting a proper ‘sign in with LinkedIn’ system, which allows Media UK to consider offering an additional way to help people log in.
Some people have concerns about using a personal account, like Facebook, to post stuff about their work. LinkedIn, since it is an account tied into their work lives, is a good fit for Media UK, particularly job ads and discussions.
However, accepting LinkedIn is not trivial, and needs a fair amount of coding above the stuff we do for Facebook and Google.
So – would you want to use LinkedIn to sign in?
And, more to the point: would the people who you work with use LinkedIn to sign into Media UK as well?
That’s useful to know. And I appreciate the issue with having to sign-in using Facebook or Google to make this comment!
LinkedIn uses OAuth1.0a rather than OAuth2.0 which makes it rather more complex to code (new PHP libraries ahoy!) but I would like to ensure that this is easier to do.
On a side note: we currently use email addresses as the primary index here, too. What might make sense is to do some clever re-working of that back end, too, to allow you to merge Facebook/Google/LinkedIn accounts as one ID. That’s considerably more work though…
The ability to sign in via LinkedIn may appeal to those that are subtly promoting their own credentials and services, as most frequently seen in the Radio Technology section. It would also make it easier to check what media experience, if any, a poster has. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing, I do not know.
From a purely sign-in standpoint, I would be very surprised if there are users that are unable to participate here because they lack a Facebook or Google account. In that respect it may be somewhat redundant.
Not sure that the issue is that “they lack a Facebook or Google account”, but that they’d rather not use them…
Personally I don’t do Facebook (I don’t have time). When the old logins disappeared I actually lost any ability to login to Media UK for a good while until I discovered the Google method (I knew there was a “backdoor” way to get a Facebook login to Media UK without having to do Facebook, but I couldn’t get it to work, and I consider myself fairly IT literate.)
But I do have a Linked-In account and I think it would be a good idea to link to that from Media UK. Both are Professional sites (with a capital P). Seems like a match made in heaven to me.
Yes, I would use it and think it’s a very good idea to offer a LinkedIn method.
Thank you, both. I’ll certainly try to get this coded as soon as I can.
It’s taken a bit of time, but you’ll spot that LinkedIn is now available as a login method. At the time of writing, I last used LinkedIn, so you’ll notice that my name is a link to my LinkedIn profile.
Users who use LinkedIn will be marked with a little ‘in’ icon on their avatar – nothing I can really do about that, sadly. My image from LinkedIn will take up to 24 hours to appear on Media UK, since we cache them locally for speed.
It’s working fine here, but for the benefit of others, I did have an issue with being led to a blank page initially. My solution was to clear my cookies for Mediauk.com, at which point it worked as intended.
Well done James – I’m doing this via LinkedIn. Like Ian I use Googlemail for multiple accounts like personal, business, spam etc, so this is a big step forward. And as David says it lets you quickly check peoples’ credentials.
This is bound to drive some sign-ups to LinkedIn – I hope you win some recognition/payment James!
Just make sure you don’t let LinkedIn “rape” peoples contacts in Media UK like they do in Googlemail – I find that practice surprising and has made me start to question whether I will stay on LinkedIn. – but for the moment I remain.
I’m sure people know about this already, but you can remove any Googlemail associations with MediaUK by selecting Settings (top right), Accounts & Import, Change Account Settings:Other Google Account settings, Connected accounts – then remove Media UK, so you only can login via LinkedIn to stop you accidentally posting via a “wrong identity”.
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A little bit of self selection as I needed to login via Facebook or Google to make this comment….
I feel more comfortable using Linkedin than Facebook for making professional level comments, in fact I would definitely not use Facebook at all. Linkedin also has an advantage over the alternative Google login – I have multiple Google Accounts which I use for various purposes and because of the way Google use the email address as the primary index, this makes them useless as a consistent id to use on the Internet. Linkedin is one identity behind which I can change email accounts at will, which is great for me.