Aug 17, 2010 09:31 GMT  ·  By

Facebook’s Open Graph platform has certainly made a lot of waves and the ‘Like’ button has been embedded on a large number of sites. But when it comes to login options, it looks like Google is still leading, according to numbers from Janrain.

The company provides a platform for websites to embed many popular login options, making it easier for users to register or simply authenticate. The platform, Janrain Engage, is apparently used by 250,000 websites, a decent number for statistical analysis, though there’s no guarantee that the numbers aren’t inherently biased, based on the type of sites that use the solution.

With that caveat, the numbers show that Google is the option of choice for 38 percent of people logging into a third-party website. It also has a rather solid lead over the second choice, Facebook obviously, which is preferred by about 24 percent of the users.

It’s downhill from here, Yahoo commands a still respectable 14 percent, followed by Twitter with 5 percent and Microsoft’s Windows Live ID also with 5 percent. The other options, like AOL, MySpacea and LinkedIn add up to the remaining 14 percent.

When broken down by area of activity, the numbers change rather dramatically. For example, for news sites Yahoo is the number one choice, with 34 percent of logins, followed by Facebook with 28 percent and Google with 25 percent.

With magazine publishers, Facebook takes the lead with an impressive 57 percent share of all logins. Google follows with 20 percent and then Yahoo with 18 percent. This is similar to music sites where, once again, Facebook leads with a 55 percent share, followed this time by Twitter with 18 percent and Google with 8 percent.

In terms of sharing, Facebook is again the preferred option, no doubt thanks to its massive audience. 53 percent of those sharing a website through Janrain use Facebook followed by Twitter with 37 percent and Yahoo with 8 percent.

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Login preferences across the web
Facebook is the first option when it comes to sharing
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