Social media sign-up stats: how popular are each?

In December 2012, we added email (a "Media UK Account") to the three social networks we've been supporting for registration and sign-in until now.

Now we're in May, we thought we'd look at some stats of how many people are signing up using each individual signin account.

Media UK, by way of a swift introduction, has a lot of at-work use. We get people to sign up when they post a job, want to edit a media title's information, or take part in a discussion about the media. You don't need to sign up to simply get our Media UK Daily email alert. We prefer people to sign up using a social network; but here's our login page: you'll notice no particular priority is given to any service.

What's interesting is that more people are signing up using email - ie avoiding any social network. Our signup is relatively frictionless: we ask for an email address, then send a link to that email address to complete the registration. (We have to check it's correct, thanks to the Data Protection Act which we're registered for). But, over 21% of all those attempts are abandoned once they enter their email address.

Perhaps people change their mind. Perhaps the act of switching over from a browser to their email is too much hassle.

So, if you ignore those abandoned email attempts, Facebook takes the top spot. Google+ is a poor second; and LinkedIn is smaller still.

If you are relying on social media networks to do signins/signups, then we've learnt to always include a "sign up by email" type registration method as well. It's clear that our users - and yours - still value not being tied to a social media network when it comes to signing up for a new website.

(PS: We don't monitor cancelled Facebook/Google/LinkedIn events where a user changes their mind after seeing their own network's permission screen. Perhaps one day we ought to.)