New & Improved Twitter Updates Changing the Way We Interact with Twitter Applications

Twitter, a social networking and microblogging service, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., is changing the way we use Twitter Applications. Starting August 31st, all applications will be required to use “OAuth” to access Twitter accounts. This being said will eliminate the need to enter passwords when signing in and will therefore allow you to access Twitter “on your behalf”.

I think this is an excellent idea since users of your service can provide you limited access to a third party account of theirs. For example, a user using Flickr (the service provider) would provide Snapfish (the consumer) with read only access to their Flickr account. This lets Snapfish access photos in the user’s Flickr account so they can order prints. Twitter OAuth is a great technology to have for people who are extending an existing service since it will give everything you need to know on that third party service with very little work.

Another new addition to Twitter in the coming weeks will be t.co URL wrapping. This form of wrapping is a great way to shorten links displays in Tweets. This will make links shorter and simpler therefore allowing the twitter user more space to write text rather than links. Also, t.co wrapping will additionally allow users to know where each link will take you. For instance, when you click on t.co links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. The purpose of this data is to offer better and more relevant content to Twitter users over time.