I'm a bit bitter about everyone being a-titter about Twitter.
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
Comments
This FUD is silly.
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.
@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.
The nerve. :shakehead
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