Earlier this week Alex Payne (@al3x), Twitter’s API lead, announced that Twitter’s OAuth beta is now open to all developers. This has been long awaited by many Twitter users and developers looking for a more secure way to start using third party tools.
Shortly after the announcement, Tipjoy was quick to announce their implementation and to date continues to be the only third party application, that we have noticed, to roll their implementation of OAuth.
The authorization screen looks similar to what Facebook has implemented for their applications. Click Allow and you’ll be on your way to integrated TipJoy goodness.
Twitter Launches Application Platform to Verify “Legit” Apps
While updating my account to enable TipJoy, I also noticed Twitter is silently rolling out their own application directory which they are calling the “Developer Beta of the Twitter Application Platform“.
From the Twitter Application Platform page developers can edit their registration settings for their application. The webform features a number of fields including space for application icons, indicating application type (client or browser) and access type (read-only or read/write).
After signing up with a registered application, such as TipJoy, the application will also appear under the user profile settings under Connections.
This is a great step forward for Twitter in building upon their early successes. While OAuth may not be the silver bullet, it can provide an additional layer of security around Twitter profiles. Also, with Twitter formalizing their process and creating an application directory (think iTunes), they will help reassure users that the applications are legitimate.
Twitter's OAuth implementation looks nice, aside from those ugly Allow/Deny buttons. ;) It'll be great when iPhone OS 3.0 comes out, since it'll have password auto-filling, which should help to improve the Twitter OAuth flow on the iPhone platform.
Reply · PermalinkAs a side note, both TweetChat and Twitterfall have OAuth implemented...
http://tweetchat.com
http://twitterfall.com
Reply · Permalink@Brooks: Thanks for the information. I suppose we should get to work on creating our own list of applications using OAuth.
Reply · PermalinkWhile we were building this into Tipjoy, it was striking to see the similarity to Facebook Connect. They should really call it Twitter Connect and have standard twitter-branded buttons to get this done. That kind of standardization can really help click throughs, I'm sure.
Generally, a user who has incorporated their social graph into Tipjoy is much more valuable than those that haven't.
Reply · Permalink@Ivan: Thanks for your insight into how TipJoy worked through OAuth connection. I think you're right about the standardized rollout of the OAuth platform. It seems like it would make more sense for Twitter to roll out everything completely (and branded) rather than spoon-feeding in beta format.
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