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Hi! While it looks fantastic, it feels a bit like Digits or identity management by Twilio. Would love to try out Cooper as well, but are there any benefits to using Cooper over Digits or Twilio?
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@levibostian fair enough! 😆 If they now would allow me to store phone numbers as well, my current workload would be reduced by almost 60% 😂
@levibostian@ihatedotpink you should have seen our first versions, totally Copper branded. But we've listened and learned and have fought hard to pull all of that back because we heard that makers want to offer a great experience for the people they serve. We want makers to see what we're doing as an off-the-shelf solution to a problem common to many apps, how do we register and authenticate users, which means this trend will continue.
@ihatedotpink@levibostian you can store phone numbers, and any information you ask for from the user. Just be sure to add 'phone' as one of the items you ask for and it will be returned when the user completes the auth.
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@dougw Thanks for the explanation. To get it perfectly right: I need to ask the user for his phone number twice? First he needs to enter his phone number to verify the number and then in a next step he needs to enter his phone number again to actually store it in the db? Is that correct?
@ihatedotpink@dougw only once. If you add 'phone' as one of the items you ask for, Copper will auto-complete the number field for the user in the next step (since they entered it in the first).
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Nice product! What kind of pricing model does this have and how are you going to compete with Facebook Account Kit (which provides 100,000 free SMS messages per month)?
@parkeragee free as in beer at the moment. We want to take a different model where we find value added services for the people we serve, and not charge developers or sell user data to marketers. The opportunity we see is to build a product where our users are also our customers.
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@dougw@parkeragee applause for taking on the social media juggernauts.
So instead of people logging in with 1 click via twitter, google, or facebook (services you can control fairly easily) you're asking people to use their phone numbers? And then asking them confirm via sms code.
This seems harder than social sign-up :(
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@johnnyquachy I think it depends on the users. There's something to be said for social signup and coding your app so if they sign in with different social networks it doesn't create duplicate accounts. I've seen many apps that do just that. I sign in with facebook one day, sign in with twitter/google the next day. It's easy enough to do, and then you have two accounts. To rectify that, you have to code your app to be able to take those accounts and merge them together. Either by having additional options on the profile page and having the user signin to each one, or by doing it seamlessly from the login screen. Doing a phone number login takes that out of the equation, especially on mobile. It doesn't work as well on desktop or tablet of course.
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@thehashrocket@johnnyquachy Or just sign in with the same social account. I m not necessary the same person on facebook that I m on twitter :)
@ekambos@thehashrocket fair enough. These don't seem like huge problems. If you want to make 100 accounts in facebook or gmail you can.
This is solving a developer problem? I guess a fairly small one.
⬆️ Upvote if you've ever forgotten a password or abandoned a signup form!
Copper is a service for developers who want a seamless, always-improving signup and signin flow in their websites and iOS apps. We remove friction so more people become and remain users, while makers ship faster and maintain less code.
Give Copper a try, create an app if you are developer, and share your reaction, please 🙌.
🗣 to @gwil, @erondu, @keesan, @sandofsky, @verbagetruck and @jeremygoldbrg for making a hell of a team.
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@dougw love the idea but found two very annoying bugs... the first i can't enter the numbers with the number pad on my keyboard, the second bug reduces the size of the popup as I enter each character on my email. Also I'm in The Netherlands and it works here :)
Perhaps I am missing something crucial here but: It seems like this is marketed towards companies solving *their* pain point of their users remembering passwords and not much thought on what the user thinks about entering their phone number for account creation or logging into an application. Personally (and maybe I am an outlier): I would never use my phone number to signup for something as I have a natural distrust (no matter what company) of how they are going to use my phone number (either to call me all the time or worse: sell it).
Have you done any a/b testing between email signup (the normal way) and phone number? I am curious as to see if users don't adopt or trust it (even if it IS inherently secure) -- this solution won't be as useful.
@taylorbarr hey Taylor, there's a definite trend toward moving away from email + password as the way we authenticate. This started in the East, where the PC wave was skipped and most people's first computer was/is a smartphone. There phone numbers are the favored identifier as many people don't have an email address. Here in the West, we're waking up to the same reality, especially the younger generations. We use far too many services these days, at trend that's only increasing, to use reasonably secure passwords on all of our accounts. Our phone will be the physical key to unlock your digital world in the not-too-distant future. While it may feel foreign now, using your phone number will be common place very soon.
What are your concerns with using your phone number? We can address those points in the product and messaging moving forward.
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@taylorbarr@dougw Would be interesting to have the option of "alias" numbers like in gmail that you can use to sign up for sites that are on a lower credibility tier... and you could then block that number if needed... just a thought. I signed up... am really attracted by the simplicity in user sign-up/on-boarding for apps we're developing targeted at the professional medical market. Which apps / sites currently use Copper?
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@taylorbarr One way I deal with this is I use a Google Voice number - the texts go straight to my inbox :)
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@dougw Thanks for your explanation. Two things though: Can you back up data that proves this vs predicting a trend based on your east coast/ west coast trend opinion? To me, phone #= for the most part, you pay for. Email address = "free".
I am all for the idea of getting rid of passwords - don't get me wrong on that but not at the sacrifice of my phone number (yes - I agree with you: the phone will be the physical key to unlock it; I just don't think it is use of the phone number). My concerns: I keep my phone on me all day - it's an extension, much like many of it is to others here. That means people can call me at anytime. Email - it's more asynchronous and less intrusive; I can unsubscribe. The switching costs if my email address, if it were to get in the wrong hands or sold, is less of a switching cost (IMO) of getting a new phone number. As much as I want to say, "yes - company that I just signed up for, I trust you with my phone number" it's just a natural trigger for me not to hand it over - even if it IS just for logging in. It's the same rational feeling behind not wanting to share your SS# online (although more serious) - right?
I guess what I am saying is - it comes down to companies, which I don't know if I can trust, having my phone number and the potential harm it would be, if those companies got hacked (or it could be that I worked for several hosting companies and saw first hand how people take for granted data security). Either way - good luck!
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@decktonic I use Google Voice which all #'s are required to be tied to a device phone number - so they technically still have access.:) Yeah I can block it each time a spammer calls me - but what if a company gets hacked and sells your phone # to 1000 spammers and they all call? err - no good for me.
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sounds pretty cool.
may somebody from the copper team walk me through the szenario if my phone is stolen. maybe from my own standpoint as well as from a thiefs perpective. thanks.
@gopietz not copper team but this is probably one of the first things you want to do even if you have/don't have copper: get hold of your phone company, tell them to block the sim-card / phone and issue a new sim-card to you (with your existing number).
@gopietz if your phone is stolen, and you aren't protecting your phone with a password or Touch ID, then you are going to have problems with a service like Copper, which uses your exclusive access to your text messages to verify your identity. But then again, if you haven't locked your phone, a bad actor would presumably have access to your apps, and your email which can be used to reset passwords on nearly every account. So we're counting on people locking their phone, which is happening more and more, as people understand the risk of not doing so. All that being said, SMS has many issues which we recognize, and we will move away from it, but the ubiquity is too hard to ignore for now.
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@dougw thank you for the reply.
Lets say the phone is locked and the thief has access to the phone number. (Im not sure if an attacker could identify the phone number from a locked phone) wouldn't that also be a problem since the lock screen shows the texts?
Also, how could I log in while my phone is gone? It takes some time until my provider can send me another sim card.
@gopietz if you lose the keys to your house with address attached, that's a problem. Similarly, if you leave your phone unlocked or messages visible without unlocking, then you've left yourself open to a similar risk on the digital side. Most people lock their devices and messages now as our phones become central command for our lives, and we're leaning into that trend.
All that said, there are some obvious things like backups in the event of a lost phone, and ameliorating some of the security and deliverability issues with SMS that we'll get to in short order.
@dougw The problem here I think is that for copper, even if my phone is locked and everything, a thief can still take out the SIM card and put it into another phone, access the phone number and then everything else. Apps are tied to a device, but phone numbers are tied to SIM cards.
Another (minor) issue is international travel.
What information are you able to gather using email and mobile number? I used your demo but don't see anything I didn't enter. One of the benefits of social sign up is inheriting data
@jmacias create yourself an app at https://withcopper.com/apps, and scroll down to the "Take Copper for a test drive section" to see what's possible. Feedback and suggestions for additional records are welcome.
@dougw Got it.
So is the plan that you will keep and share users information? For example if someone signs up with copper on product a and adds name, address, shipping, etc. when they go to product B after the text verification is all of the information pre-populated for them to enter?
If so is the real value only visible in a few months when you have had people implement and use this so that you can collect the data to use for others?
@jmacias you've got it. We store your personal information with your phone number. When you use that to sign up to a service, we give it back to you so that you can share it without repeating yourself. With each use and integration, the network gets stronger for everyone. So, all boats rise with the tides. Imagine how easy it'd be to try new products launching on PH if everyone used Copper :)
By the way, what OS and browser are you using / getting stuck on in the confirmation step?
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