The Importance of Using Twitter API via OAuth

I hope you noticed the latest changes at Foller.me. I’m talking about the new Followers rate section thanks to the TwitterCounter API and of course something I’ve been dreaming about since the launch of the project. You view a profile at Foller.me before making a decision about following that particular person or not, right? And yeah, we had a link at the bottom of the page that lead to their profile on Twitter, where you could click the follow button.

Now we’ve updated that section to a Twitter OAuth powered follow button. This means that once you authorize Foller.me to use your Twitter profile without having to even input your username or password, you can follow people directly from Foller.me, without having to do any extra clicks. Yeah, we’re ready to remove our beta label and as we promised we’re coming up with a few more features and optimizations.

Guess that’s enough for the news section. Now, back to the topic of this post. OAuth. Y’know at the very beginning I was thinking about giving people the chance to input their username and password on Foller.me, but hey, that’s dangerous, right? I still see tonnes of websites and Twitter services, which are super cool, and yes, they still use basic authentication instead of OAuth. Seriously, it took me less than two hours to incorporate OAuth into Foller.me and once somebody has authorized with you (on the server side) you’re able to do all the stuff with their account with no difference from baisc auth! No limitations at all! Please take a look at the Twitter OAuth Examples which include ready-to-use libraries (and classes) for the major programming languages including php, Python, Ruby, .NET and a bunch of others.

So, why bother switch to OAuth? Well, personally I hate websites and Twitter services that would ask me for my Twitter username and password, I start to think that they’re scam (don’t you?), even if they’re not. I repeat, I see tonnes of those, and I gave out my password only to a couple because I really, really wanted to see what’s inside. After that, I immediately picked a new password for my Twitter account. And yes, I really can’t wait till TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop and the others implement OAuth into their apps. That would make them extra cool, seriously.

Here’s more! There’s also lots of discussion going on in the Twitter Development in Google Groups and I heard somebody mention that the source parameter for your apps will no longer be available sooner or later. Yep, they’re closing down the basic authentication method. I’m not sure when, and the Twitter API Wiki says that the date hasn’t been announced yet, but hey, you should do it now before it’s too late. OAuth applications won’t need any source parameter as Twitter already knows who they are after signing your app with them.

So dear friends, please switch your apps to OAuth, it’s very, VERY important.