I obviously can't answer for the author, but in my own endeavors I've used social auth as a quick fix and said "eh, if it takes off I'll go back and do it right." Chances are the subsegment of his market without a social presence is small.
Authentication and marketing are big hairy problems, especially for people embarking upon small side projects. Social auth can help with both with remarkably small effort on the dev's part.
Edit: Also if you'd really like to give it a shot, having a twitter account doesn't require you to use said twitter account.
Edit 2: Changed tone - "whether you like it or not" is way too confrontational of a phrase to use there - I apologize if I sounded like I was attacking.
1: There seems to be a social auth holy war going on. Your comment was respectful, so please don't think I mean you when I say this, but there's too damn many people saying the equivalent of "OHHH you shitbag! I hate the Facebook/Twitter/other! Why would you force me to have that in order to have your service?" The truth is that it wasn't meant as a personal slight - your opinions just fell on the wrong side of an early-stage tradeoff.
I obviously can't answer for the author, but in my own endeavors I've used social auth as a quick fix and said "eh, if it takes off I'll go back and do it right." Chances are the subsegment of his market without a social presence is small.
Authentication and marketing are big hairy problems, especially for people embarking upon small side projects. Social auth can help with both with remarkably small effort on the dev's part.
Edit: Also if you'd really like to give it a shot, having a twitter account doesn't require you to use said twitter account.
Edit 2: Changed tone - "whether you like it or not" is way too confrontational of a phrase to use there - I apologize if I sounded like I was attacking.
1: There seems to be a social auth holy war going on. Your comment was respectful, so please don't think I mean you when I say this, but there's too damn many people saying the equivalent of "OHHH you shitbag! I hate the Facebook/Twitter/other! Why would you force me to have that in order to have your service?" The truth is that it wasn't meant as a personal slight - your opinions just fell on the wrong side of an early-stage tradeoff.