Comments on: The Twitter Ecosystem is Being Neutered

By: links for 2009-01-10 | stuart henshall

links for 2009-01-10 | stuart henshall — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 08:04:54 +0000

[...] The Twitter Ecosystem is Being Neutered – Twitter needs an authentication system Let's hope it comes soon. It's hard to run or develop a service without it. (tags: twitter oauth authentication) [...]

By: 140Char » A solution to the loss of trust in Twitter apps?

140Char » A solution to the loss of trust in Twitter apps? — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:51:13 +0000

[...] the loss of trust in applications is something that effects the whole Twitter ecosystem, as Mark Evans writes on Twitterati. And even implenting the much-requested OAuth as a technical solution doesn’t guarantee a [...]

By: markevans

markevans — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:15:18 +0000

Well, Twitter seems to be taking its sweet time getting around to it. Of course, that seems to be its M.O.

By: David Beckemeyer

David Beckemeyer — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:32:04 +0000

I know for my case, part of the reason for not being that concerned with giving out my Twitter creds was a "who cares? – it's only Twitter" attitude. That was when the service was a toy or experiment (in my case, probably expecting to never use it for anything). That changes if you start to care about it or use it etc.

By: Antonio Altamirano

Antonio Altamirano — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:45:19 +0000

You say:

"It used to be that providing your username and password would happen would even thinking about it. That’s quickly changing due to growing concerns about phishing, spam and hack attacks."

That should have never been the case in the first place. Security and accessibility should be of paramount importance to Twitter and unfortunately it is not. Nowadays, I find it rather odd that someone would give out their password to a site "without even thinking about it".

By: @toddlucier

@toddlucier — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:40:59 +0000

Recent twitter disruptions are only a wake up call for folks to take reasonable precautions. We've gotten a little lazy with sharing our data. We wouldn't go around giving out our bank card pin number to anyone we purchased goods from.
Yet many are using the same username and password across numerous services and just giving their data for a little fun…. nonsense.
Twitter needs to adapt a system akin to facebook, and google, where the app goes back to the parent web site to confirm identification and permission.

Twitter will be fine.

By: David Beckemeyer

David Beckemeyer — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:03:05 +0000

All new twitter-supporting projects I've been working on avoid requiring the user's password. For example http://twitmart.org. However, this does put limits on what the third-party apps can do. Twitter needs to implement an oAuth or similar mechanism so third party apps can still do things with the user's permission, but do not have to ask for, or ever see, the user's password.

By: felipecoimbra

felipecoimbra — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:53:43 +0000

I agree, that's why I haven't tried any of these twitter apps yet. There are some hope out there You can still leverage Twitter and build cool/fun/useful apps without requiring users password. That's what I've been doing with http://twtapps.com/(fresh out the oven, btw)

I'm so against sharing the way they're doing it that I wouldn't even build an app where I'd have to handle users passwords (never say never, but at least for the time being.)

By: Ed Shaz

Ed Shaz — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:50:57 +0000

No,
this is the best thing that could happen! We've all become so addicted to the process of must build on it, spread it, make 2.0 add, add, add!

Hell half the time at's the hype of a sales pitch of a frind who is hoping to have the next big Twitter ap some VC's wan't to back or buy.

Twitter won from day one because it's minimalist form and function were so not all the other bullshit.
Don't rue it. Return to it.
And trust me, Twitter is NOT twiddling their thumbs.