It seems there is a misunderstanding about how we’re using Facebook. I’m getting some signals that some people don’t want to sign up “because of Facebook”. Let me clarify three things about what we do with Facebook.

• There is no and there never will be any obligation to have a Facebook account to use Trustroots.
• It’s not possible to sign up with Facebook, it’s merely possible to link your Trustroots account to Facebook. More than half of current users have done so.
• If a user has linked their Facebook account with us we’ll use their profile picture if the user hasn’t set a Gravatar image. This is using the Facebook Social Graph and if you don’t want FB to receive any data from you you should set up e.g. Ghostery. Or help with this issue.

Then there are some ideas that we’ll work out at some point:

• IF you have a connection with your Facebook account we’ll have a map layer that will show you your FB friends on the map. (Update: because of changes at Facebook’s end, this wasn’t possible anymore.)
• IF you have a connection with your Facebook account we’ll try to show you which of your friends are also on Facebook so you can connect with them on Trustroots.

And then there’s the long term goal to actually get people out of Facebook for many things, starting with some very active FB groups related to low budget traveling.