[lug] The deal with applets / notifications / panels / indicators / systray.....

[Rob Nagler]

On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 12:11 PM, David L. Willson wrote:
> This is bald opinion, and mine, unsubstantiated by statistics or scientific measures:

I'm known for that, but I save the "statistics" for people who ask.
You seem to be asking so here goes.

Hotmail has 365M users according to Wikipedia.  It's supposedly the
largest email service provider out there.  You can login with your
hotmail id, anywhere Windows Live IDs are accepted.

Facebook has had many security breaches in its short life.  Many of
those breaches involve exposing personal photos from its founder's
profile.  Not sure I've seen breaches involving Bill Gates personal
info but maybe there have been.

Windows Live ID has been around since 1999.  Facebook login on has
been around two years(?).

> Facebook is (and was) simple, so I can get connected with minimal effort.

Hotmail is simpler to register for than Facebook.

> Facebook shares as much information as possible, so I can (usually) tell
>  whether the fellow I found is the fellow I was looking for.

This is why the FB app is popular, but does not explain why websites
are using FB for authentication instead of Windows Live.

> Facebook hits a very high value point in the effort to give everyone what they
> want. Buyers, sellers, socializer's, gamers...

Speaking about lack of statistics...  FB had $4B of revenue in 2011.
That's $.25/account.  Yahoo, which also makes most of its money from
display advertising, had $5B in revenue in 2011.  However, FB has more
unique visitors so that would imply sellers value Yahoo users more
than FB users.

> People distrust Facebook and Amazon a little less than they dis-like remembering another set of credentials.
> Microsoft seems unable to achieve that same low level of distrust. Maybe it's got something to do with the
> legion of lawyers and legislators they control.

I guess this is a Linux list so MS-bashing is appropriate.  I'm not
sure what Amazon has anything to do with this discussion, they don't
offer an authentication service afaik.  MS is well-trusted in the
business world, still.  They had $72B of revenue in 2011 so I'd say
that "buyers and sellers" and certainly gamers trust MS about 18 times
more than FB, judging by that measure.

The reason why FB's authentication service is not explained by any of
the above.  I would say that it is a unique set of phenomena that is
making this happen so quickly.  Fortunately, FB nows supports OpenID.
That's not how it was supposed to work, of course, but it will help
OpenID proliferate.  Probably wasn't in the business plan of OpenID,
however.

Rob