Visiting a website for the first time? Why not use your Amazon credentials?
Amazon today announced "Login with Amazon," a single sign-in service that it says removes the friction involved in signing up for a new website. With the move Amazon is stepping on the toes of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, all of which offer their own single sign-in services.
The difference: Unlike Twitter, Amazon has your credit card information.
Zappos and Woot (both of which Amazon owns, by the way) Login with Amazon has been pretty successful so far. Zappos says that 40 percent of its new customers used their Amazon credentials, and according to Woot, customers who signed in with Amazon bought the most products.
Both of those metrics are obviously hugely enticing for e-commerce sites, which are constantly looking for better ways to sign-up customers for their services and get them to buy more products.
Login with Amazon works with more than just websites, however. Amazon is also opening up the service to developers of games and apps, which should allow for easier in-app purchases on both Android and iOS.
Of course, the reality here is that with all of these companies vying to become the new log-in "standard," we're only going to end up with more "standards," not fewer. But that's obviously a risk Amazon is willing to take.
Photo:Carl Malamud/Flickr