OAuth | CHRIS CREDENDINO

TwitPic, the largest photo sharing service on Twitter, posted a tweet to their Twitter account tonight announcing that they had just implemented OAuth as the new login method for their site. If you’re not familiar with the OAuth protocol, how it works, or how it affects you as a user, here is the short version.

OAuth is an open protocol that allows a user to share content stored on one site with another site without having to fork over the login credentials. In other words, you no longer have to provide TwitPic with your username and password to login to their site. Instead, you will need to click the “Sign in with Twitter” button located in the top right corner, when prompted enter your username and password on Twitter.com, and then click the “Allow” button to grant access to TwitPic. This allows TwitPic to connect to your Twitter account so it can access your data, but at no time will TwitPic receive your username and password. To learn more about OAuth visit their Web site here.

Yesterday I wrote an article about some of the changes going on at Digg and what users should expect to see in the new version of the site when it launches in a few months. While the majority of the changes are still under wraps, Digg took the stage at the “Bigg Digg Shindigg” party at SXSW and teased the crowd about some of the new features. Those people who signed up for the alpha version of the site had a chance to see a preview of the new Digg interface and those who keep tabs on the official Digg blog caught a glimpse of the new login dialog box. It’s obvious that the company is putting a lot of time and effort into the new site which houses a new backend, new infrastructure layer, new services layer, and an overall cosmetic facelift. These are major changes so it appears the company is tearing down the entire site and building it from the ground up – one piece at a time.

So far the upcoming changes to Digg v4 seem very attractive. Since the project is five years in the making the company more than likely covered all their bases before they executed their game plan to overhaul the site. Although this might already be in the works, one important feature that I had mentioned to Digg this afternoon was an option to allow users to search for their friends on Twitter so they could connect with them on Digg. For example, if a user enters their Twitter username on Digg’s site, Digg would scan the “following” list on the user’s Twitter page, important the list to Digg, and allow the user to choose which friends to add. The good thing about this method is that there is no need to provide a username or password to Digg in order for them to access your Twitter friends list since it’s public.