New Chrome Extension Waltz Makes Clef Work Everywhere on the Web
Oakland, CA (PRWEB) December 18, 2013 -- Users of the popular password replacement software Clef (http://www.getclef.com) announced the release of an open source browser extension called Waltz (http://www.getwaltz.com) that makes Clef work everywhere. Clef is a smartphone app that lets users log in to any computer by presenting their phone. Clef recognizes the phone instead of passwords that need to be remembered and typed. However, Clef previously required cooperation from each site before users could use the app to log in. Waltz was built by Clef users who were tired of waiting on each site to integrate.
Waltz makes Clef much more appealing for mainstream users. More than 2000 sites have integrated Clef since it launched less than six months ago, but the lack of support from some of the major sites made it less compelling for many users. Thanks to the hard work of some of Clef’s most excited users, that’s not true anymore. Starting today, anyone can download Waltz and use Clef anywhere on the web.
Since it launched less than 6 months ago, Clef’s growth has snowballed:
- More than 2,000 sites have installed Clef.
- The number of logins has grown by more than 70% each month since launch.
- Clef has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist, BBC, Inc., and many other important publications.
With the explosion in growth of Clef, the platform has attracted a huge number of new users. But after using Clef on the smaller sites they visit, users want to start using Clef everywhere else. Even the large growth Clef has seen over the last few months has not been enough to keep up with users’ appetite. In a move that is unprecedented for such a young startup, the most technical of Clef users decided to solve the problem themselves by building an open source extension of the product.
"It’s so rare to find a technology like Clef that changes the way you work so quickly. I fell in love with Clef immediately, but after using it for a few weeks on smaller sites, I needed it to work everywhere. I started talking to the Clef team and some other users who were also getting antsy for wider adoption and a few of us just decided to build it ourselves. I’m really proud of Waltz and am excited to introduce more people to Clef." - Joe Wegner, Waltz Developer
Waltz makes Clef work everywhere by serving as an account manager in the browser. When a user visits a site for the first time, it remembers their credentials and securely encrypts them in the browser. Then, the next time they visit, they’ll be prompted to log in with the Clef Wave, just as if the site had integrated with Clef. Information from syncing the Wave is used to decrypt the stored credentials and log them in seamlessly. Clef’s single-sign-on works with Waltz, and, unlike any other password manager, so does single-sign-off. Logging out of Clef on the phone immediately logs the user out of all of the sites on their computer.
"We had talked about building something like Waltz for months, but our team is still small and so our development schedule is already filled with the improvements we’ve been making to our core product. When we heard that our users wanted to build Waltz on their own, we couldn’t have been happier. This is something we want to exist, and there’s no way we could have gotten it out this quickly." - Brennen Byrne, Clef CEO
An extension like Waltz had been on Clef’s timeline, but with a small startup development team, it wasn’t coming fast enough. As requests for Facebook and Gmail integrations piled up, the Clef team continued to prioritize the core product. With an open API that developers have complete access to and support from the team, it was only a matter of time until a few developers decided to take the project on themselves.
To learn more about Waltz, visit http://www.getwaltz.com. To learn more about Clef, visit http://www.getclef.com.
About Clef
Clef is an angel-backed Oakland company dedicated to replacing usernames and passwords online. Since 2012, Clef has pushed the boundaries of privacy and security technology, powering logins on more than 2000 sites and making solutions that are simple and approachable for any user. Clef is available for Android and iOS customers. Visit Clef at http://www.getclef.com.
Brennen Byrne, Clef, http://getclef.com, +1 4155802533, [email protected]
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