My friend asked me for help to build an affordable Janrain alternative. He creates a non-profit website and Janrain's $100/month is a way too much to pay from his own pocket.

My question: do you use any of such services and/or see any value in them?

I personally think that they create more problems than they solve.

1st – they just don’t work. Usually, after login with Janrain or Gigya, site owners redirect you to the form where they ask you for an additional information that wasn’t in the service response (email, age, address, etc.). What makes the widget just a form filling tool that doesn't work (Try to sing in to the Reuters.com with your Twitter account)

2nd - user must remember what social service he used to login to the site. Using others will lead to creation of a new account.

These two problems bother me the most but there’s more. So, what do you think? Please, share your wisdom.