This is the third part of my contextual series which will focus on a few technical details on how to gather user information. I cannot stress this enough, be wary of the user’s privacy. Make sure that anything you do is covered under your privacy policy and that the data you gather is done with the user’s consent. As soon as a user considers their experience with your product as being creepy, you have lost the user.
Social networks like Facebook provide us with a wealth of data. Social networks are a great way to get a user to consent to data without having to get them to fill in forms. The information these social networks provide to you are bound by terms of service, terms of user and of course a privacy policy. Make sure you keep these in mind while thinking of ways you can use the data.
Before considering social networks as your primary source for data, keep in mind that with the modern web and native applications, your product may already have access to a lot of data that may be useful to you, especially regarding the user’s location. More specific information on a user, like age and gender will require input methods. If the user’s social connections are important to your product or you don’t want to submit users to numerous input fields social networks would be important.
