Twitter makes OAuth mandatory; tries out new link wrapping service

Internet

Abhinav Lal

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Posted on 03-09-2010

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Twitter will be launching two major updates in the coming weeks, and wants you to know they’re about…

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Update 1: New authorization rules for applications
Starting August 31st, all Twitter applications now require the use of the OAuth ID to be able to access your Twitter account. Advantages of this move are:

Applications are no longer allowed to store your password.
If you change your password, the applications will continue to work.
Some applications you have been using may require you to reauthorize them or may stop functioning at the time of this change.
All applications you have authorized will be listed at http://twitter.com/settings/connections.
You can revoke access to any application at any time from the list.

Update 2: t.co URL wrapping

Twitter has now got its own link shortening service, which it calls the “t.co” link wrapping service. The man advantage of this is to allow users a look at the domain name of the shortened link, giving them a glimpse of what they’re opening. Here are the other advantages as listed by Twitter:

A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title.
You will start seeing links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened links and lets you know where each link will take you.
When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time.

In related news, Twitter has announced it has more than 145 million users now, and over 300,000 apps.