Many twitter apps could fail in June.
Meany of the most popular twitter application, including almost all desktop and mobile applications could stop working in June.
Back in December Ryan Sarver (Twitters Director of Platform ) took the stage at the Le Web conference in France, and announced that come June twitter would stop supporting basic authorization for third party applications (such as Hootsuite or TwetterDeck).
Basic authorization is the method where you submit your username and password directly to the application.
Twitter wants developers to use what is called OAuth to provide authorization. OAuth, is where twitter opens in a new window and asks you to authorize an application, then either returns you to the web site, or provides you with a PIN number if you are authorizing a mobile or desktop application.
However few if any applications have moved to OAuth, HootSuite for example have been “almost ready” for over a year.
However if the rumours floating around Twitters development forum are anything to go by twitter could be planning something that would make makers of mobile and desktop applications react quicker.
According the rumours twitter is planning to kill off the source tag (the part that says send from [MyApp] ) for non-oAuth applications shortly after the Chirp conference in April and then ban all non-oAuth application in June.
This is likely to force developers into action because the Source tag is a great way of promoting your application, to throes who follow, throes who use your application.
Also it would change such applications to say “send via API”, which some other applications take to imply the account is used by spammers.
I feel I must declare an interest here, I’m currently writing a desktop twitter client which uses oAuth to validate users. I believe TwitterBrite not only fills a gap in the market (being the desktop equivalent of Hootsuite) but also since it uses oAuth not Basic authorization, it’s not only more secure but come April, it won’t make you look like a spammer.