Magic – Completes signup forms automatically, with just an email address

[aresant]

On the plus side

- The convenience factor is compelling, like auto-complete.

- As a v1 you can see the true magic in a seamless signup.

On the downside:

- It does something unusual / unexpected / creepy.

- It's too slow - noticeable lag vs. say the auto-suggest in search.

- If accuracy is good why bother exposing that to the user? Intercom.io does this all in the backend off of email only registrations and seems to have about a 70% hit rate. The data is useful to business owner but I'd bet the user would feel less enthusiastic knowing that I have their personal fb, twitter, linkedin, etc as soon as they register.

I am sure that svbtle can show the A/B data validating this is worthwhile for THEIR audience.

But I'm not sure for a broader use case this is going to help due to the factors mentioned above.

[tedmiston]

> If accuracy is good why bother exposing that to the user?

That's a great point. A prior startup I worked at used a nice social referral tool, whose name slips my mind right now, but their backend would asynchronously pull Facebook, Twitter, etc. links for each of your customers. It was really convenient and worked for 80-90% from what I recall.

[gcr]

Nice start, but perhaps Magic can also suggest the user's password by searching for their email address in a database of known password leaks.

[Killswitch]

Best feature suggestion ever. But what would be cool is to do that, but instead of pre-fill in their password, notify them that they are using a password that is known to have been a previously leaked password of theirs.

[minimaxir]

Presumably, they have some preexisting database that maps email addresses to personal information. Their Privacy page, however, is not transparent how exactly they got this data:

> Broadly speaking, we collect information in three ways: (1) when you provide it directly to us, (2) when we obtain information about you or your company through trusted third parties or indexing systems, and (3) passively through technology such as “cookies”.

This is a disconcerting use of "secret sauce," particularly since email addresses have the same weight nowadays as usernames.

[prezjordan]

Maybe clearbit? Which you can opt out of here: https://claim.clearbit.com/claim

I did this a few weeks ago and magic signup does not work for my email address.

[tomasien]

It's Clearbit - and btw way more data than this is available on you based on an email address. Scary in a lot of ways for sure.

[swang]

Their secret sauce is a third party API.

[devit]

Why would you use this instead of login with Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc., which only requires two clicks from most users and actually has better privacy implication since the user knows which data you can access?

Or maybe the goal of the service is for web sites to surreptitiously get more data from users who are otherwise unwilling to provide it, but are somehow willing to provide an e-mail address tied to their real identity?

[tedmiston]

One advantage from the dev side is not having to deal with the OAuth integration, Facebook permissions, tokens expiring, etc.

[bobbygoodlatte]

That assumes the user is logged in to Facebook / Google / Twitter. That's a safe assumption on desktop, but not on mobile.

We saw much higher FB auth rates on desktop web than mobile—bad enough that we may forego Facebook login on mobile web entirely.

[Raphmedia]

It's pretty creepy that I can randomly enter email adresses and get first and last names... !

[simi_]

Tried some short gmail handles, can confirm. Creepy and stupid. Cloud-based datastores coming with your browser (aka what Chrome has* and probably its competitors too) have better performance, privacy, and UX; I can't think of any reason why I'd use something like this.

* - AFAIU if you set a sync passphrase you also get some (probably limited) form of "zero knowledge" client-side encryption; this makes me hopeful they implemented it properly i.e. "we literally can't access your shit" https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en

[listic]

ok, how does that work: did all those people sign up with Magic?

[syntex]

Actually this make me very angry that my private details exposed in such creepy way, even if this is using some public APIs etc.

I would never sign up to service with such form.

[tcfunk]

So now I can find out the first and last name of the owner of whatever email I punch in there?

[georgestephanis]

If it's the primary email on their account, you already can with Gravatar.

https://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/profiles/

[tedmiston]

Somewhat. Either it's rate limited or their servers are overwhelmed right now. I'm getting some weird errors thrown back like status code 422.

[Cyberdog]

On the one hand, yes, I can see how this could improve sign-up rates for those who are concerned about those things, and I count myself among that number from time to time.

On the other hand… yeah, creepy as hell.

[tedmiston]

Say what you will about Dustin Curtis, but everything he makes is just so nicely designed and enjoyable to use.

I'm curious about the pricing model: $20/mo for 2,000 requests. I wonder if you still pay for the request if it returns a non 200 or if their API can't find a name.

[20years]

Clearbit, Full Contact and Pipl all have email lookup APIs. My guess is they are using one or more of these APIs.

[acomjean]

I have a fairly unique last name, which is in my email address.

So far two dead relatives that never really used the internet have been "marketing matched" to my email address. So I get spam for my deceased grandmother and uncle. Its a little jarring. I'm not sure what kind of matching they do but clearly its not working.

Plus isn't the point of using a service being able to decide to match it with twitter, Facebook or just not link to those things.

[_qbjt]

Because it helps your users save time, Magic increases conversion rates and makes the web easier to use.

Honestly, how much time do you really save by auto completing a couple of fields? This seems like a solution in search of a problem.

Also, while I don't have the data to speak for other users, I personally don't see myself paying for any service that presents my own personal information to me before I even know what the fuck it is.

[altern8]

I don't get it :-/

I couldn't even try it because my browser's autocomplete automatically completed all fields.

Doesn't everyone has autocomplete?

Also, it's pretty creepy.

[aerovistae]

No, I'm in the same boat. Chrome already does this for me, I couldn't tell if anything different was happening.

[shogun21]

I suppose it's a good thing nothing came up when I entered my email?

I would be turned off from a website or service that prepopulated a lot of my information without my consent.

[blazespin]

I wonder if a new way to do signups would be just an emailto: link that you click and send. From there it automatically logs you in and sends you a password.

[hanniabu]

This is what I was thinking as well, but not necessarily email you a password because it's always some random crazy thing. More so remember the computer you clicked the email link from and either keep you logged in or you can log in with just your email from the computer you clicked the email link from. Sure there could be some security risks with your phone being stolen or a snooping SO, but most sites don't necessarily need to have that worry. For instance, commenting platforms like disqus, reddit, or your favorite news platform, or some site you'll probably only use once. With sites like this it doesn't matter much of other people gain access to it. It's not like your social platforms, LinkedIn, bank portal, government site, etc..

[tedmiston]

Like Magic Links in Slack. That's a great idea.

http://www.sandpaper.io/post/134762619566/slack-magic-link

[shinratdr]

I have no problem with this, but it doesn't work very well for me.

Tried about eight of my email addresses. School and work ones did nothing, and neither did my Outlook.com account, or Yahoo.com.

For Gmail addresses it just pulled the name from my Google+ account for the one that had it, and failed on all the rest.

Not super impressive IMO. Especially considering all my email addresses are some variation on firstname.lastname or flastname.

[Happpy]

Guess who is using [email protected]

[king_magic]

So, I guess it's cool now to overload app/service names? E.g.: https://getmagicnow.com.

But more than that... "Because it helps your users save time, Magic increases conversion rates and makes the web easier to use."

There's one heck of an unfounded/unvalidated assumption.

[RubyPinch]

Probably a way better way to increase "conversions" would be just to not have a pain-in-the-ass login process.

oAuth/Persona, and then don't ask for anything else until its actually needed.

And now you have (for the logged-into-oauth-provider case) a 2 click login system. It can not get easier than that

[Grue3]

Isn't there already a service called "Magic"? https://getmagicnow.com/