There was a very interesting article today in ReadWriteWeb, which was authored by Gigya talking about which services users tend to use to login to third party sites and Facebook was the clear winner with 46%, but Twitter also placed very well.

Read the article here.

If you’re debating how to proceed, I’d say the key takeaway is not so much that you NEED to enable commenting via Facebook but rather than you need to provide choice for your users – make it as easy as possible. Some users might like to login utilizing Facebook, others Twitter, others by signing in to you site, and possibly others might prefer to post anonymously.

As your audience becomes increasingly comfortable using their social media profiles to sign in it will become a must for your site too. The good news is there are a number of really wonderful tools to help make this happen, including one that I use on this site!

Another consideration to keep in mind is that over time things happen. Things change. Needs change. User habits change. As you are having this debate with yourself it is important that you weigh the need for ease of use with third party sites for logins versus the integrity of your own site.

This is really one of those big questions that tends to cause major debates inside of businesses as the idea that somehow a website visitor can log into your site using a third party application can be the cause of tremendous dialogue as it starts to get at other questions such as “who owns the experience” and “what are we trying to do here”…