After having launched its official Twitter for iPad app, Twitter has announced some new changes to the service that is aimed at making the social networking site a little bit more secure for users and a little easier to use, especially if you’re using third-party services. As part of the change, there’ll be a new URL shortener and all apps that log on to Twitter will need to now use the OAuth authentication system, which went into effect at the end of August.
The OAuth system will allow applications to have access to Twitter, with the user’s approval, but those apps won’t have access to a user’s password and works in a similar way to facilitate logins like PayPal does with transactions without revealing the buyer’s credit card number. According to Twitter, these changes will be in effect with OAuth:
- 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
Additionally, in order to make the service a bit more secure, especially where links are concerned, Twitter will be also rolling out a new URL shortener. This way, users will have a general feel for what they are about to click on so that they’re not taken to malicious websites disguised as a shortened link. The new t.co link will wrap links embedded in tweets and display either a part of the domain or the domain so users will have a general idea of where they will be going should they click on a link: “When you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service to check if the destination site is known to contain malware, and we then will forward you on to the destination URL. All of that should happen in an instant.”
According to Twitter, the following changes will be in effect for users in terms of URL shortening:
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.
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