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The Issue With APIs and Third-Party Apps
Early this morning Orli Yakuel who runs the Go2Web20 startup directory had all of her direct messages (aka private messages) on Twitter exposed to her 600+ followers. Michael Arrington has a good recap of the issue on Techcrunch. The instant that I read about this trouble I thought it could be one of the large number of third-party apps built on Twitter’s API. Arrington has since updated his recap to note that it looks like it was a third-party app, GroupTweet that caused the direct messages to be shown to the public.
In this case, everyone seemed to immediately blame Twitter for the issue. As more platforms (Twitter is a platform) launch and more applications are built on top (e.g. Twhirl, FriendFeed, GroupTweet, etc.), we will need to determine methods and techniques to determine when the issues are with the platform and when they are with the application. By default, that isn’t an easy proposition.
Furthering the issue and making it more complex is the issue of installation and updates. For example, you install x app to work with Twitter today. You read the terms and are satisfied so you install. A couple of weeks go by and you are bored with it so you leave and move on to the next one. When the first app updates, you may get hit with the updates and not even remember that you installed the first app and blame the issue on the second app or the platform. See how complicated this can get? Where’s Columbo when you need him!
Here’s a startup idea: a tracker for Web apps that you’ve installed and their current status (installed, active, not active, deleted, etc.)
Of course with all of the issues Twitter has faced, I can see why the immediate blame went to them.
If you look at the pic on the techcrunch post, you can see that it says that it’s been posted “from web”. Generally (and this is a general thing, not for all of them) most “official” API apps have a “source” which tells the API where it’s coming from, i.e. twhirl. It might still be using the API, but just not “officially”.
(I put the “officially” in quotes as there’s no such thing, just ones that Twitter knows about)
As far as I can tell, grouptweet does not use the Twitter API, it just harvests credentials and goes from there (and it isn’t listed in Twitter’s API directory). If they used the API this probably wouldn’t have happened. The only thing Twitter did wrong as far as I can tell based on current information is not moving to shut down (or at least block) grouptweet.
Official vs UnOfficial apps mean nothing.
It’s trivial for anyone to pretend to be any other official app.
Registries wouldn’t work either.
What works is changing your password every few months. :)