Dive Brief:

• Social media infrastructure company Gigya offers technology allowing consumers to use their social media account credentials to sign into e-commerce sites. Some 40% of shoppers use a social login if they have the option, according to Gigya. 

• In Q4 of the most recent fiscal year, 76% of retail customers who signed into retailers’ sites via social media used their Facebook login credentials, a slight increase from 74% the quarter before. Only 16% used Google Plus (down from 17%), 3% used Yahoo (no change), 2% Twitter (down from 3%), and 1% Paypal (down from 2%).

• Facebook’s great advantage over other social media outlets is bigger on retail sites than other e-commerce sites, Gigya said.

Dive Insight:

With more than 75% of social media logins to retailers going through its site, Facebook is clearly the winner here —​ at least for one social-media infrastructure company’s clients. But with smartphone and tablet shopping taking off stratospherically recently, this may be a highly variable area and an opportunity for other social media sites to jump in. Facebook just turned 10, and with more than a billion worldwide members, it isn’t going anywhere. But we’ll see if it maintains this kind of dominance when it comes to e-shopping logins. The question for retailers is less which social media login is popular —​ that can come and go —​  and more whether social media logins present a good opportunity to make things easier for consumers to find and buy products. If so, now is the time.