Why ZenSports Is Moving To Facebook Login

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As announced in a previous blog post, we launched v1 of ZenSports back on February 15th, focused solely on pool/billiards here in the Bay area (where we’re based). We talked about how we’re going to soon be launching into all sports and into all geographical markets, and shifting our core focus to almost entirely be on the player experience (vs league/tournament directors). We’re also becoming more of a social network vs. just a marketplace business, and adding a slew of great social features such as the ability to find and discover other players in your area to play with, live streaming your matches, etc. Our target launch date for all of these new features is June 27th, and we’re excited to bring these to the entire world.

In the meantime, we’re going to be doing an intermediate push to the App Store and Google Play Store next week, and this push will have a portion of the new features ready so that some of our core users can begin testing them out, providing feedback, etc.

One of these new features that we’ll be pushing next week is a switch from email logins to Facebook logins. This means that all ZenSports users will now be required to have a Facebook account in order to use our product.

The shift from email to Facebook logins was born out of necessity to capture users’ real identities as they’re using the ZenSports platform. By only requiring an email to log in up to this point, we’ve had no way of verifying whom is whom, and you could theoretically sign up with any email address, type in any name, and claim to be anybody. As a small startup team, we don’t have the resources required to dedicate to verifying real user identities based solely on names and emails.

Which naturally brings up the question, why do we care about users’ real identities, and why should you care? There are several very important reasons why everyone should care:

1. Fraud Prevention. Currently, users can register and pay for leagues and tournaments through ZenSports with their credit card. If we don’t have a way to verify someone’s real identity, the potential for fraudulent use of credit cards skyrockets. We have no way of 100% verifying that the user on the other end of a credit card payment is who they say that they are, other than the information that they’re allowed to freely type in when they create a ZenSports account. By requiring Facebook login, we’ll know the true identities of anyone who submits a credit card payment, and we can prevent fraud much more easily.
2. Gaining trust among other users. As we shift to becoming more of a social network for sports where players will search and discover new players in their area to play with (as well as existing friends), it’s critical that users trust ZenSports to show them whom is really whom. Again, by simply typing in any name and email, not uploading pictures, etc. as we have allowed up to this point, it doesn’t build trust among users that the other person that they’re interacting with is who they really say that they are.
3. Safety Concerns. With the upcoming ZenSports launch, players are going to be able to schedule in-person matches with other players and teams, similar to how one would schedule dates in a dating app. For users to feel comfortable enough to meet up with someone brand new in person, they’re going to want to be assured that the other person’s identity is real. Having verifiable identities of our users, and the ability to know exactly who they’re interacting with, is critical to ensuring the safety of everyone.
4. Compliance with COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act). COPPA requires companies that operate websites or mobile apps to ensure that children under the age of 13 are not creating accounts unless they take extraordinary measures to ensure parental control. As a small startup, we don’t have the resources to ensure parental controls for children under the age of 13. As such, for the foreseeable future (and possibly forever), we will not be allowing children under the age of 13 to create ZenSports accounts (this is the stance that most companies take, even those that have much greater resources than us). If we didn’t have Facebook login, we would need to implement several verification methods to ensure that no one under the age of 13 is creating accounts, as well as deleting the accounts of anyone under 13 who does happen to create an account. This would take considerable time and money on our end to implement. Since Facebook already does not allow children under the age of 13 to create Facebook accounts (and they monitor this closely), we can be guaranteed that anyone who logs into ZenSports using Facebook is in fact 13 or older, thus ensuring our compliance with COPPA.
5. Cuts down on product clutter and improves the user experience. By having users log in via Facebook, we’re able to automatically pull in users’ profile information, including name, email address, profile photos, etc. If we didn’t have users log in via Facebook, then we’d have to re-ask everyone to re-enter this information in, upload new profile photos, etc. This takes time for users to do, clutters up the product experience, and requires an unnecessary amount of duplicate data entry. Now, with Facebook login, users simply tap 1 button, and we’re able to pull in all of their existing info from Facebook into ZenSports.

We understand that requiring Facebook login may not be for everyone, and there will undoubtedly be 10%-20% of users that either don’t have a Facebook account or don’t want to use Facebook within ZenSports. While we understand these concerns, it’s critical for the above 5 reasons that we implement this feature. There are 1.8 billion (yes billion) people in the world that are on Facebook, and so we don’t feel what we’re doing is an unreasonable request, and it will ultimately lead to a better experience for everyone involved.