On 8/13/10 4:31 AM, TheGuru wrote:
> I'm curious to post this question to see if Twitter has fully thought
> out the impact of forcing OAuth onto their API applications. While it
> may appear to be a more secure method preferred in principle by users,
> the fact of the matter is that one of the main benefits of the API, is
> the ability for third party twitter alternatives to be created, thus
> allowing people to tweet during "business hours", when they normally
> could not due to firewall / web sense restrictions, etc, that prevent
> them from accessing the twitter.com domain.
>
> Via basic authentication, users would never have to visit twitter.com
> to login and gain access to twitter functionality via api clients. By
> shutting this down, you are now forcing ALL potential users to login
> via twitter.com, many of which do not have access to this domain in
> their workplace environment, thus excluding them from easily using
> your service wholesale.
>
> This can / will, I suspect, have significant impact on twitter usage /
> volume, unless I am missing something and there is an alternative the
> does not require them to directly access the twitter.com domain to
> grant access.
My opinion: if your boss does not allow twitter, then don't do it.
Although I have to admit that your point is valid, except for one major
flaw: if twitter.com was really blocked, then the API would be blocked
as well ;-)
Also, some (most) desktop clients do not require you to login via OAuth,
but instead they use xAuth. I'm sorry that you will no longer be able to
play the silly quizzes etc, but you'll just have to live with that :-)
Tom
