I'm a bit bitter about everyone being a-titter about Twitter.

[primesuspect]

I'm a bit bitter about everyone being a-titter about Twitter. (http://icrontic.com/articles/im-a-bit-bitter-about-everyone-being-a-titter-about-twitter)

[Laurie Slade]

Giggle. Even if Ryo where evil incarnate, what is the worst he could do? Twitter as me and destroy my Twitter ranking? I'm sure he has better things to do than mess with my personal branding.

[Ryo]

Thanks for the great post! I think that's the first time I've been called a "cheeky kinda guy" :-)

[Isaac Z. Schlueter]

I've met Ryo. I inherited some of the code he wrote at Yahoo. He's a good guy.

This FUD is silly.

[Brahm Windeler]

<cite>You should be using unique passwords for every site you sign in to anyway. That’s just common sense for good security practice.</cite>

To quote <a href="http://www.dieselsweeties.com/print/?date=20080811" title="Diesel Sweeties in print 2008.08.11" rel="nofollow">Diesel Sweeties</a>: "Have you <b>met</b> people?"

That's exactly the problem. Given the myriad accounts people have these days, passwords are a pain to remember, while you or I may not reuse them, many people <i>do</i>. That <i>is</i> the reason OAuth and OpenID were created. That tweet regarding "shaming Twitter into OAuthing" may have been made tongue-in-cheek, but there's a grain of wisdom in that remark.

And while the article is a bit sensationalistic - calling Twitter users "gullible" and focusing only on the newly Twitterank site - in reality all of these sites that use the Twitter API are just as guilty... and that actually makes the problem worse. The problem is bigger than just whether you know enough about all of the people behind each and every Twitter API based site to trust them. It's also encouraging the general practice of giving out a password for one site to a third party site. And just to be clear that I'm not singling Twitter out, sites that ask for your Yahoo/Google/Hotmail login and password to extract contacts from your address books to find potential nodes in a social network are just as guilty of this.

Sorry if I'm coming across as being too pedantic. It's my paranoid nature and information security training coming through. Of course, as they say, it's not paranoia if they really are after you.

[Brahm Windeler]

Um. So, apparently your site doesn't like my markup. Sorry about that.

[primesuspect]

@Laurieslade: I agree. That's my take on most of this stuff

@Ryo: Thanks for commenting. As we say here in Detroit: Ryo Chijiiwa is good people. ;)

@Brahm: Anybody who quotes Diesel Sweeties is okay in my book. I absolutely agree with you that the spotlight of shame should be brought on Twitter for not using an open authentication system. Hopefully when this all shakes out, that will be the good that comes out of this hilarity.

Major sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace all do that - they'll ask for your gmail/hotmail/etc login so they can search your address book for friends. You are absolutely right. It's not acceptable.

[Thrax]

LOL Twitter drama. It never fails. People + melting pot = drama.

[pseudonym]

Awesome. I'll buy Ryo a beer if he ever makes it to ICHQ.

[Lincoln]

@Brahm: Sorry 'bout that, markup fixed. 'Twas a bug in the comment parser; platform is still new :)

[Jesse Luna]

I think this got started when a few people complained that the program had posted unauthorized tweets to their timeline. They didn't see the little checkbox perhaps? Then the next tweets started calling it a phishing scam. I was one of the guilty early retweeters of the alleged spamming so shame on me.

[Black Hawk]

@Laurieslade: I agree. That's my take on most of this stuff

@Ryo: Thanks for commenting. As we say here in Detroit: Ryo Chijiiwa is good people. ;)

@Brahm: Anybody who quotes Diesel Sweeties is okay in my book. I absolutely agree with you that the spotlight of shame should be brought on Twitter for not using an open authentication system. Hopefully when this all shakes out, that will be the good that comes out of this hilarity.

Major sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace all do that - they'll ask for your gmail/hotmail/etc login so they can search your address book for friends. You are absolutely right. It's not acceptable.
None of that @'s bs here on the forums. Use quotes like normal people.

The nerve. :shakehead

[primesuspect]

:p

[Lucretia Pruitt]

Well said - sadly, he wasn't just villainized for a night. I used twitterank today and got 2 dozen "OMG!! that's a Phishing site! Quick! Change your password!" DMs.

Seriously people... why check the facts?

If Mr. Chijiiwa had monetized his site and Mr. Marks had done that? He could've faced a serious libel suit - because it did damage the reputation of the site and Mr. Marks didn't do any diligence or fact-checking whatsoever.

Horrid.

Personally, I'm saddened that there was no real repurcussion for Mr. Oliver Marks - if

[Ajax Jones]

If twitpic did steal usernames or passwords or if twitpic got pissed off when twitter release their picture service, would it be enough to harm twitter? How many of those people use the same ebay/paypal combo as well !!