For many users worldwide, Twitter has become a sort of infrastructure tool and is being used for various purposes, from keeping up with friends to posting links to websites or photos, or sometimes just for plain nonsense. Nevertheless, as we use more and more third-party apps, it has become apparent that Twitter has to move to OAuth as an authentication-mechanism.
Providing other services with a usernname/password-combination is a really bad idea and the events in the last couple of days have shown the weaknesses of the current system. Twitter has had plenty of time to act, but now it needs to speed up its endeavours and restore trust with the users. Also, developers of third-party application need a reliable and useful authentication-mechanism as well. As Chris Messina puts it:
Everyone’s got their priorities and Twitter has come a long way in the past several months in terms of performance and stability. But in 2009, I want to defeat the password anti-pattern once and for all! Starting with Twitter would be a significant strategic achievement and I know that Twitter is game, it’s just matter of getting it done and making it happen.
Twitter, please act now!
Please follow the user @oauth_now to show your support for a better, more secure Twitter! Once you follow @oauth_now you will get exactly two direct messages from the user @oauth_now. One message asks you to retweet this message and the second message will be sent out once Twitter finally has implemented OAuth for every Twitter user.
Thank you for your participation!
