Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [54]
If you’re new to Twitter, or to Web apps in general, you may wonder whether APIs raise security concerns. Developers who use Twitter’s API can’t access private data, such as your password or direct messages. But you still need to be cautious: Some third-party apps do ask that you log into Twitter by using your username and password. Before you hand over your information, make sure that the app in question is reputable; thankfully, no one yet has had to deal with a major scandal in which a Twitter app turned out to be a password-stealing scam, but some very real security breaches have occurred, and you should always be very careful about giving any password to anyone. With your password, a third-party application could look at your DMs.
If you’re concerned about allowing third-party services to have your username and password, good news is on the way. In February 2009, Twitter started beta testing open authentication (OAuth). Using OAuth allows you to authorize a third-party Web site or application to essentially log in as you and perform actions on your behalf without ever having your username or password. Flickr, Basecamp by 37Signals, Facebook, and other online services already allow you to use open authentication. Full rollout of the feature is expected by mid-2009, and it will eventually become mandatory for all applications.
Arguably the best-known third-party applications built on Twitter are designed to make keeping up with your network easier. You can easily follow your network on the Twitter Web site when you have only 50 followers, but after you start getting followers into the hundreds, you can have some serious difficulty keeping track of your network without a little help.
Your options for third-party applications that help you use Twitter grow and change constantly; here are some of the current favorites:
Twhirl (www.twhirl.org)
TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com)
Twitterific (http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterific)
Digsby (www.digsby.com)
Twitter provides a short list of third-party applications right on its Web site at http://twitter.com/downloads. The Twitter fan wiki also attempts to index the growing ecosystem of applications, services, and other sites built on the Twitter API, but finding the best ones remains a problem that Laura’s startup www.oneforty.com hopes to solve.
Third-party applications such as Twhirl and Twitterific provide more complex, customizable ways to sort through your Twitter network, stream of friends’ tweets, @replies, and direct messages, as well as update your tweets. Some avid Twitter users choose their third-party apps based on those apps’ compatibility with other social-media services that some twitterers also use, such as FriendFeed (www.friendfeed.com) and 12Seconds (http://12seconds.tv).
Most of the downloadable third-party applications that you can use to view Twitter on your desktop require an additional download called Adobe Air, a free program that many of the applications are built on. Generally, when you choose to download an app that requires Adobe Air, Air also downloads automatically.
We cover these third-party tools in depth in Chapter 9.
Sharing Tweets All Around the Web
Twitter’s a far-reaching service, but you can also pull your Twitter presence out onto the rest of the Web by using social-networking widgets (some of which are powered by RSS) and a few other nifty tweaks.
Social networks are those sites online where people can go to meet and stay in touch with new and old friends and colleagues. Twitter itself is a social network. Some of the social networks you may use already include MySpace, Facebook, Ning, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn. And — you guessed it — you can put your tweets on social networks.
If you’re a MySpace user, for example, Twitter makes a badge (or widget) that you can embed right