Signing in to third party websites has become easier and more user friendly over the last couple of months. The examples below obviously share a common design approach: a popup window that even looks very similar across sites. Even authentication with OpenID will look similar soon. This has become obvious at the last OpenID User Experience summit at Facebook (see recommendations for OpenID Providers and Relying Parties).
Facebook was pioneering popup style authentication with Facebook Connect and also set design standards:
MySpace followed with MySpaceID:
And now we have AOL‘s Socialthing for Websites which went live this week. Socialthing for Websites is based on AOL‘s OpenAuth API.
The benefits of those approaches are obvious. Users can easily recognize those windows and the authentication process becomes more intuitive for them. Authentication happens in one window, no distracting and often confusing redirects between sites anymore.
I am sure, also content providers will benefit from easier authentication as it has become easier for users to join sites, interact with other visitors and even their friends there.
Tags: AOL, API, Authentication, Facebook, Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, OpenAuth API, Popup, Socialthing