Twitter “OAuthcalypse” Coming This June

May 12, 2010 by Matt | Posted in Social Media 3 Comments

The Twitter OAuthcalypse is coming!

Twitter has announced to developers that they will be turning off basic HTTP authentication for the API on June 30, 2010 in favor of the more secure OAuth protocol. This shouldn’t cause too much trouble for most users, though developers of Twitter applications need to hurry up and update their software.

OAuth reduces the risk of password theft, as you don’t have to give applications your password. You will also get a higher API limit.

Hopefully Twitter will have Loren Brichter cook up a patch for Tweetie for Mac, as it does not yet support OAuth. (Tweetie for iPhone doesn’t either, but that’s guaranteed to be fixed right away, as it’s now the official Twitter app.)

  • Rich

    Well, I just got an error today when trying to hit the main and login pages:

    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class OAuthException in /home/myaccount/public_html/mydomain.com/wp-content/plugins/tweetable/OAuth/OAuth.php on line 8

    So does this mean Twitter started early? Or could it be due to some other problem?

    (Note: By firing up FileZilla and removing the Tweetable plugin directory I was able to login again, but then discovered I could not edit any of my posts (as if they are now read only), so maybe some permissions got changed? Am checking it out. Any ideas?)

    • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

      No, Tweetable is not going to have any issues as a result of this. It’s other Twitter plugins that will, since they’re not necessarily using OAuth.

      It looks like the OAuth class I use is being included twice. Are you using any other Twitter-related plugins?

      • Rich

        I have another installed but it is not activated…