0

I'm writing a mobile app, and I've reached a roadblock in trying to figure out how the owner of a Facebook profile could also be the same owner of a Twitter profile, based only on account info.

If John Smith signed up for Facebook, but didn't input an e-mail address, phone number, or any other unique identifier, how is he distinguishable from the hundreds of other John Smith Facebook users? More importantly, how can I know that he's actually the same John Smith as on Twitter?

My current solution is:

When users sign up for my app, make them input an e-mail address and phone number.

This way...

Importing friends via phone contacts would be simple: check which of your friends' phone numbers already exist in your database.

Importing friends via Facebook would be possible: pull your friend's e-mail from Facebook (assuming he has one), and check if it exists in your database. If your friend's Facebook profile has no e-mail or phone number to pull, then I think there's no solution. Is there one?

And so on for importing friends from Twitter or any other social networking site.

Jason
  • 6,878
  • 5
  • 41
  • 55
  • Why not search the User's contacts on his device like the Facebook and Twitter apps do? I think that might increase (however marginal) the number of positive hits. – Siddharth Lele Oct 09 '12 at 06:26
  • That was the first way: "importing friends via phone contacts". – Jason Oct 09 '12 at 06:55
  • Oh. My bad. I missed that part. :-( – Siddharth Lele Oct 09 '12 at 06:56
  • So do you think this is pretty much all anyone can do? Is there a solution for the italicized question above? – Jason Oct 09 '12 at 06:57
  • I suppose. Since the email address is a variable, I really think this is the better way to go. Since the platforms have nothing in common except their email address, which again might differ from the one on FB and the one on Twitter, this would be a better approach. – Siddharth Lele Oct 09 '12 at 07:02

0 Answers0