Account creation is, arguably, the most important point of interaction between an app and user. Screw it up and people leave, never to return. And, yet, it’s typically the most abrasive point of contact you’ll have with a service. (Second, perhaps, to canceling an account.)
Why?
Service providers tend to confuse personal identification as a prerequisite to offering a personalized service. This is the kind of confusion that leads to questions like “what’s your name?”, “where do you live?”, “how old are you?”, etc. when all they really need to know is “do you need a key to get you back in again?”
The world got too excited about social networks. Now every time I want to try out a service, it wants to know my dating status. (I’m married dammit, leave me alone.) Stupid questions like these lead to distrust and bailout.
Here’s a question all application developers could stand to ask: Are we providing an identity service? If the answer is “yes,” then good for you! Let me know if you need some cheerleading. If not, go easy. Not only do you not need my identity, I’d argue that whole segments of apps don’t want it.
Take a look at Health 2.0 and, more specifically, [portable] medical records. The privacy risks involved are very real, very obvious. Far more so when you take a set of hyper-sensitive data, store it centrally, and then make it personally identifiable.
What if it wasn’t?
Maybe your news aggregator doesn’t need to make my attention preferences personally identifiable either. Just a thought.