Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2009

A Twitter Usage Pattern

Twitter means different thing to different user. So the usage may vary. Some people use Twitter as a game to find as many followers as possible. I use Twitter mainly for feed aggregation. I read tweets more than I tweet myself. Thus, follower count is not my concern. I think follower count is distracting. Some even suggest that Twitter hide follower count . I follow tech journalists like @ TechCrunch , @ rww , @ slashdot , @ alleyinsider , @ techreview and @ databazaar . I keep on looking for tech journalists with great sources to follow. Well, there are too many tech news that I can chew in a day so I just skim their headlines. Twitter's short text makes it easier to skim the headlines. Each tech line is accompanied with a link to the blog post where the full news is published. Because I am living in a different time zone I will read the news few hours late. I consider being late is an advantage to me because I can also read the comments. I use the comments to check my own opini

Authentication by Mentioning using Twitter

Conventional method of authentication is to send an email with a link back to a user. You can achieve the same result with Twitter . You don't have to ask your user for an email address anymore. Your user will have one less worry that she will be spammed by email. With this method you don't have to ask for your user Twitter password. And you don't have to register your application to the Twitter's OAuth . The method is called authentication by mentioning. However, your user need to have a Twitter account. How does the method works? Prepare a short text and ask your user to tweet it and do not tweet anything else until the process is complete. She will have to inform your application that she has already tweeted the text. Your application will then verify that the user has indeed tweeted the text by reading it through Twitter's API . It is as simple as that. Your application needs to know your user's Twitter name to do so. Your user have to sign in to Twitter bef