Rant - Federated Logins That Still Require A Local Account

Irritating Engadget double-secret authentication page.

So, I love all these websites that say “LOGIN NOW WITH TWITTER!” or whatever other little social network icon they can shove into the box. And, sure, that’s great – federated authentication is a good thing. But why, goshdarnit, does it then ask you to create a new username, an email address, and a new profile? I JUST GAVE YOU THAT INFORMATION.

Right now I’m ranting at you, Engadget, for dangling the juicy possibility of a simple “I’m twitter-person me” authentication, and then bait-and-switching it for a new login. Why didn’t you just ask for that to begin with and skip the misdirection?