Twitter's Digits lets you sign up for apps with just your phone number

As part of the new Fabric software development kits announced at its Flight conference, Twitter is introducing Digits, a new onboarding tool that uses a user’s phone number instead of the traditional email address.

With Digits, users can sign in or sign up for a mobile app in just two taps, the company says on its website. The idea here is to use text message verification to save users from having to remember what login service or information they used for a particular app, as well as to leverage the verification system to keep spammers and other unwanted folks out.

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User growth is another one of Digits’ goals. Twitter bills the tool as a new way for mobile developers to grow their user base. Many potential users are discouraged by complex sign-up processes or never complete them, and many feel uneasy about using other social accounts to sign up.

The Digits tool can be inserted into an Android or iOS app with just a few lines of code and can be customized to match the app’s native look and feel. It’s available in 191 countries and in 28 languages. There’s also a Web API for integrating Digits into websites.

Another feature, Friend Finding with Digits, lets people “use their address books to find other Digits users in your apps that they know,” according Twitter’s blog post.

As mentioned, Digits is part of the new Fabric trio of SDKs Twitter just unveiled at its conference. The three kits are for Twitter itself, the company’s crash reporting tool Crashlytics, and MoPub, Twitter’s ad network.

Twitter has been announcing and rolling out a slew of new features and products lately, including its upcoming Buy button, a new Audio Card, an openly available analytics tool, and more.