Twitter has announced some changes this morning that have an impact on the 250,000 applications using the Twitter API.
So that you don’t have to read the full update, we have summarised them here:
– All apps (including Tweetdeck, Seesmic, EchoFon and Foursquare) will no longer be able to access Twitter via username and password; rather you’ll need to use OAuth – that is, logging in to Twitter itself in a separate window so that the app cannot store your Twitter password. This applies to desktop, browser and mobile apps and it means that Twitter knows which apps you are using and will allow you to revoke access to any app at any time.
– Over the next few weeks, Twitter will be rolling out a new link wrapping service, t.co, which will shorten and simplify links. There are three main benefits of this: 1. the actual domain and part of the URL will still be showing so that you can see what you are clicking on; 2. when you click on the t.co link, Twitter will check the destination for malware; and 3. Twitter will be gathering stats on the links, so that you can see which links are most popular.
All of this should be done by the end of the year.