Is the Facebook Mobile App that they advertise on Facebook free?

For a mobile app, is user registration or Facebook Connect better?

• For a mobile app, which is better: Forcing the users to register to the app or Use Facebook Connect (enable user to use their facebook user/pass in order to login his/her app) http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ The trivial arguments for any side are well  known: Use Facebook Connect - the user doesn't need to remember additional username/pass registration is unnecessary (one less step) the app can retrieve some user info (gender, age, etc..) Use self user-mangement - user might concern to provide his/her Facebook credentials The app can "ask" the user to fill whatever info in need some users don't hold a facebook account p.s. many apps let you connect via Facebook and then ask you for an additional username, why is that?

• Answer:

  There is no right or wrong approach, as there are pros and cons to each and every product needs to evaluate them based on how they map to its own use case and value prop.  Most of the big considerations are covered in your summary, and I agree with others that giving options is certainly a more user friendly approach.  But giving the option can create two classes of users, which can complicate matters if it's a social app whose users are trying to find their friends.  (Ex. A FB connected user wouldn't see that their non-FB connected friend is also using the app, and might send them a unnecessary / unwanted invite.) As we were deciding on the best approach to take with , we discovered a few nuanced considerations that are worth noting.  1.  Privacy - A material portion of users we talked to during testing had the distinct perception that registering via FB Connect automatically overlays FB's privacy policies on that app.  While we know that's truly not the case, perception is reality.  And if privacy is important to your app, it's an important point to consider. 2.  Personal Data - More users were concerned about FB Connect being used to harvest their personal data than we ever would have thought. One other relevant data point...  A friend who develops games for one of the big mobile game studios told me they saw registration conversion drop to 10% when they forced FB Connect.  Now there were clearly other variables at play there.  And games have their own set of issues thanks to Zynga et al creating a fear of social spam.  But this certainly highlights that a non-trivial amount of users have an aversion towards FB Connect. On a personal note, for now we decided to not include FB Connect in our registration process - mainly because privacy is so important to our company and product.  But in general, it clearly depends on the app.  Giving options is usually a great approach - as long as it doesn't create complexities that adversely impact the user experience.