Why Use Social – 3rd Party Authentication in your Login workflows? The importance of the Connections of the users on other places I’ve described here: https://programtom.com/dev/2020/10/07/social-software-8-features-to-make-a-product-successful/ (number 3). You will save time and effort from the need to implement and support user management. It is not an easy task. Even the big Corporations have a hard time with it – with data leaks/dumps from several of them being sold right now on the dark net. So, it is not easy to grasp the Big Picture, implement it in a State that is safe, secure, using the Best Practices for all aspects
Custom Login
If you are implementing your own custom login, you better have a very good reason to do so. It may be good Design, User Experience, Coding Skills, etc. It may be that the platforms are accessible only in a hidden – private network, or very few know where is the entry point. Writing test cases where you check every possible input and scenario is very good idea.
Choosing the more appropriate 3rd party login provider could be a marketing decision. You, as a software engineer, will integrate the platforms where the users of the concrete application or service.
It is all in one place to go and to choose and a must have for whatever case. Facebook has nice ad and user targeting features. It has almost all the functional features of the other platforms – text statuses, photos, galleries, short stories (photos/videos), temporary stuff, connections(friends), events and more. The platform has the most amount of users because of aging and keeping user engaged and logged in.
Instagram by Facebook
Instagram is marketed (drawing in the minds of the users) as the photographers social platform. All the photo editing features are present in the other social applications, even within the Camera Programs. Nonetheless, If you target something visual – beauty, flexing, photos, it is a place to go. The login with Instagram is located on the Facebook Developers Documentation pages.
WhatsApp by Facebook
In several places in the world – WhatsApp is the Instant Short Messaging Application. It has advantage of using the mobile data for transportation and also offers free audio and video calls. If you are targeting Geographic locations where it is of high use, it could be essential to have this Authentication Provider – Europe (Spain), India, etc. Facebook is having a hard time with monetizing it. We’ll see.
It is the Social Network for the United States of America. I have rarely seen/heard/ marketing or really meaningful usages outside. Here is the documentation.
Stack overflow
The social network for the Software Developers, Engineers and Coders. If you target the technical it is one of the crucial places. https://api.stackexchange.com/docs/authentication
The majority of the technical people use also LinkedIn. Developers, Managers and owners can “flex” about their technical skills and accomplishments (instead of the hard-details solutions-only like Stack overflow). With the raise of the number of users, it had attracted Human Resource Personal, Financial, Real Estate Brokerage and many other types of specialist on. Here is the documentation on how the get started. It could be used potentially for other purposes beyond authentication – Autocomplete Forms of technical users: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/shared/references/v2/profile/position?context=linkedin/consumer/context.
Login with Gmail is a must for Android Applications as almost any phone has the Google Play Store which is used with Gmail. The Authentication Provider is available out of the box, without any additional software or application.
Apple
The same is true for Authentication on Apple Devices iPhones, iPads, Macs and so on. it is actually required and forced by Apple, otherwise apps are being rejected from the App Store.
Snapchat
Snapchat tries to attract attention to its platform by providing login feature – the same way Facebook did years ago. It is a young, more feature based social network – the disappearing stories and messages.
TikTok
TikTok is the youngest social network in the bloc and it at the moment of writing this article – does not have a login feature: https://developers.tiktok.com/doc. They will probably add it in few years . We’ll see how the global politics will go.