Pallian Creative

Tweetizen Integrates with Twitter using OAuth

About 2 weeks ago, Twitter announced that it had changed its OAuth support status from closed beta to public beta, which meant that 3rd party developers (like myself) can use OAuth to access a user’s account information without requiring them to hand over their login credentials. We, of course, wanted to make sure everyone logging to Tweetizen felt comfortable trusting us, so we started working on implementing OAuth.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that we are OAuth compliant! This is a huge step towards ensuring that 3rd party aps out there don’t abuse your login information. I’ve come across tons of twitter apps and sites that just blindly require you to submit your username and password to access them… and a lot of them don’t even have a privacy policy in place. This is equivalent to you logging into some random site and giving away your email username and password - and hope they don’t sell or abuse your trust. With OAuth, you can be assured that your login credentials are safe and secure. OAuth works by allowing a user to grant access to their information on one site (the Service Provider), to another site (called Consumer), while protecting their account credentials.

I have a feeling Twitter will make it mandatory for all 3rd party apps like Twitpic, Tweetdeck, Digsby etc to start using OAuth to ensure their user logins are not abused, and it will just make the overall twitter experience a lot more secure for everyone.

With Google adopting OAuth for all the Google Data APIs last summer, it’ll only be a matter of time. In the meantime, next time you see a website that asks you for your twitter username and password, check their privacy policy to make sure they are legitimate. If you don’t see legal stuff, don’t use the product.

And now that you know Tweetizen embraces security, login securely and get started by creating your twitter group and embedding them on your site! We also just launched a facebook fan page to get more interactive with our users and fans… so if you use facebook, add us and spread the word.