It's Time to End Using Social Login. I Would Know — I Helped Develop It

About 15 years ago, I was there at the beginning of social login. With absolute conviction, I knew that it would dramatically improve customer identity.

Social logins allow people to use fewer passwords — their Google, Facebook, and Apple credentials, most commonly — to sign into an ever-growing variety of online accounts.

Looking back, it's clear that social logins indeed improved password management. But they never fully solved the problem, and instead, have introduced some new, unforeseen consequences.

It's been a good run. But now, with similar conviction, I can say:

It's time for social logins to go. And it's time for passkeys to replace them.

By leveraging the same biometric authentication used to sign in to phones, passkeys offer a similar benefit as social logins — seamless authentication — but they finish the job. Passkeys can eliminate passwords.

In this post, I'll cover the four reasons why now is the time for online retailers and brands to convert to passkeys and biometric authentication.