Comments on: No-Registration Web Services

By: Ross Hill

Ross Hill — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 09:27:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking about a few ways that I could go about registration for a restaurant review website. Requiring registration seems to be the best way to go. Without it spam is going to be huge.

Sure it would be nice if you didn’t have to register but unless your site is just a “feature” like bugmenot or picnik there is so much more value in registering.

How hard is it? It annoys me too but most places you only need an email address and a password and maybe a couple of other fields. I bet you use the same username and password everywhere you go anyway, it’s not like it requires thought. Are we just being too picky?

By: Peter Verkooijen

Peter Verkooijen — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:12:36 +0000

No registration is fine for free stuff for anonymous people. If you want to do anything a bit more serious and need to know who your audience/customer is, I don’t see a way around it.

Craigslist is a mess for a reason.

Registration is annoying though. I hope someone comes up with a better identity management solution.

By: Bartek_rac

Bartek_rac — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 20:07:36 +0000

Also picnik.com offers really great functionality without registration required.

By: candice

candice — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 02:03:54 +0000

Or even spamassassin, or some variant thereof, if it’s an email-ish thing.

A filter layer is useful to have, because later you can plug whatever into it, change solutions, whatever. (Think amavis’s style of virus spam scanning, if you’ve used it.)

By: Andrew Parker

Andrew Parker — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:44:23 +0000

Seconded Candice.

Regarding running messages through filters for spamminess, how about Akismat? I’m a huge fan of that service. I have it on both the USV corp blog and my personal blog.

By: candice

candice — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:24:58 +0000

Registration annoys the hell out of me, personally. So tired of signing up for stuff.

You forgot to mention del.icio.us as something that works well without a login, too.

Lee, what about running messages through filters for spamminess?

By: Lee Semel

Lee Semel — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 04:44:00 +0000

I’m working on a site that could potentially be used to send spam, but otherwise is pretty lightweight — I’m wondering if it’s better to not have registration but require people to fill out a captcha every time, or require registration once and then keep it persistent. Both options seem equally annoying, but I’m leaning to registration as a less-annoying option.

By: Andrew Parker

Andrew Parker — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:25:58 +0000

That’s exactly the trade-off I’m talking about. Craigslist could require registrations and they could learn a lot more about their users’ patterns and enhance the service. But, doing so would sacrafice the lightweight feeling of being about to do everything on the site without creating an account. I think I prefer the latter to the former.

In the case of a site like Salesforce.com, there’s no choice. Data has to persist across logins to provide any useful functionality, plus Salesforce needs to collect billing info. But, I’d love to see a lightweight service try to take on a Salesforce-esque solution without registration. I have trouble imagining it, but that makes me all the more eager to see it.

By: Darren Herman

Darren Herman — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:52:59 +0000

Persistence across log-ins is great - fair enough to the product manager. However, what about learning about your user base? Isn’t that valuable?

Also, what type of sites are you referring to? A site like SalesForce.com will need registration as it holds significant data from a particular user. However, Craigslist is a site that you browse… doesn’t really need registration data. The only data you send it is if you want to post a “classified” ad.

I’d argue that Craigslist could become much more “intelligent” if you registered and it learned (based on keyword, and other tracking) about your usage behavior to provide more relevant results.