Sorry about your Oauth Implementation, Mine's been working steadily with no hiccups: Lot's of very solid implementations out there.
As far as the user sign-up problem, Yeah, I agree, It's a bit of a scare for the user to have to connect to an off-site twitter authority page -- But that's what Facebook, paypal and all the big boys are pushing toward. As Robert Palmer once said: "Your gonna have to face it, your addicted to passwords". Jim On Jul 28, 1:27 am, chinaski007 <[email protected]> wrote: > Let's be honest... > > The end-result for third-party developers using OAuth appears to be > fewer sign-ups, less reliability, more complexity, and potentially > less security. > > Google Optimizer reveals that users are more likely to sign-up for > Basic Auth than OAuth. That's just fact. Test it for yourself to > confirm. > > I suppose this is not so weird. Users are accustomed to giving user/ > pass information even to "foreign" apps. It is far more disruptive > and invasive for them to go to some bizarre Twitter screen asking them > to "approve an app". To the average user, what does that mean? (And, > heck, it may even require more steps if they have to login again to > Twitter.) > > In terms of reliability, Twitter OAuth was down for days several weeks > ago. Tonight yet another unannounced change occurred that broke major > code libraries. Meanwhile, Basic Auth has been plugging along just > fine and dandy... > > So what IS the benefit of OAuth? > > It doesn't benefit developers as you will likely get more sign-ups > with Basic Auth and Basic Auth is far, far easier to setup. Sure, > OAuth might satisfy some power users hungry for security... > > But is OAuth even more secure than Basic Auth? > > Perhaps not. After all, tonight's fix was for an OAuth security flaw > known for at least 10+ days (judging by tweets to @twitterapi) that > allowed for potential impersonations of credentialed users. > > On the heels of Twitter's (unofficial) assurance of better > communication with developers, this sort of unannounced change is > distressing. What's next? (Have Labor Day Weekend plans? You might > want to cancel those... just the right time for Twitter to make an > unannounced API change!) > > As for us, we are in the strange position of deprecating OAuth in > favor of Basic Auth. > > Weird, eh?? > > Okay, we are not totally deprecating OAuth, but we are advising users > that Basic Auth is far more robust and reliable. > > And so our message to new developers: avoid OAuth like the plague. If > you must, offer it. But let Basic Auth be your backbone: more > reliable, more sign-ups, simpler, and probably just as secure. (Just > look at Google Code bug reports about OAuth to get a sense of > reliablity.) > > (Okay, okay, this post was written at 4am after a workday that started > at 8am, and after Twitter introduced this new change at 5pm... (hey > Twitter, can you introduce major new changes EARLIER in the day so we > can react!?!?)... it still doesn't excuse Twitter's continued > disregard for the small-to-medium size developer.)
