Yesterday, on its Twitter API Wiki, Twitter quietly unveiled a “Sign in with Twitter” feature. It’s a very simple idea: It gives you the option to use your Twitter ID as your login for third party services. But what’s more interesting is what Twitter could do with this. Basically, this could be the first step at launching a “Twitter Connect” of sorts, the same type of platform that Facebook is building with Facebook Connect and Google is building with Friend Connect.
To most people, at its most basic level, Facebook Connect is useful right now simply because it allows you to sign into other services with your Facebook account. This is nice because hundreds of millions of people already have a Facebook login, and Facebook Connect eliminates the need to fill in all your credentials to yet another service. With millions of people already using Twitter and it is exploding in growth recently, Sign in with Twitter would be useful for the same reason.
But why sign in with Twitter over Facebook? Well, Twitter touts its integration of OAuth, the open standard for secure authentication, but most end users don’t care about that. What they would care about though is having the ability to sign in to a service with their Twitter names and interact with the micro-messaging platform to say, easily tweet out whatever it is you are doing. If you’re reading an article, you could tweet out the article with one click without leaving the page. If you’re playing a game, you could tweet that out from within the game.
Yes, that’s a lot less powerful than some of the proposed uses of Facebook Connect, which promises to port a lot of your online activity into your Facebook profile. Facebook’s grand goal with this seems to be becoming the centralized place for all of your activity online. But Facebook is a lot more complicated than Twitter, and one of the reasons Twitter has exploded in usage is because of its simplicity. And already a ton of services are popping up that are build on top of Twitter, just as Facebook’s Platform allowed services to be built on Facebook.
But one key difference is that Facebook is still a relatively closed environment in that regard. Twitter is anything but. Most applications built on top of Twitter seem to have no front-end connection with the service beyond maybe a name that is “Twit____” or a logo. Facebook applications all reside in Facebook.
But that’s another reason why Facebook Connect is so important to the social network. It allows other sites to leverage its platform (though not really the Platform) that aren’t affiliated with Facebook. But again, Twitter’s simplicity could make something like Twitter Connect viable. And it would seem to be more open, which developers tend to like. As Yahoo’s Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote about Sign in with Twitter yesterday, “It is Open done right.”
Of course, Twitter is still far, far behind Facebook in terms of users. And at the end of the day it would seem the the service that controls the most users will win what ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick has named the “calling card” battle. MySpace is in the battle as well, as is Google. But Facebook up until now has seemed to have most of the momentum in this space. Twitter could alter that a bit. If it cares to.
[sign in buttons by Peter Denton]
I like this only because as more and more websites start offering their version of “connect”, it will diffuse the power and finally render such individual services irrelevant. Then at some point we will have a universal ID system.
Well, obviously that was the idea with OpenID, but that hasn’t exactly caught on so far.
Ah, but openID is just for logging in, and Twitter is for much more
Go Twitter Connect. I’d use it for sure. Now just give me a way to generate a random Twitter password each time I log in using a token (my idea my idea my idea) and I’ll be yours for life.
And ps. I’m not too keen on linking my e-self to my Facebook account all over the place, cos Facebook is still an area I keep a little little bit private (lol!) in as far as that is possible!
Please explain your idea with an example.
Open id calls for one extra id to maintain, that is useless id in openid :”D
The idea is that when I logon via Twitter (or Facebook Connect or Yahoo, or GMail, or any OpenID provider) that I have the added security of using a token. This can either be a separate bit of hardware or software running on my phone.
I pay a sub for this service because i’m a business user and security is very important to me. I don’t want to have to change my password every week, or month. So I love this token because just like the token my company gives me to log in to my corporate VPN, I have to key in a PIN to run the thing, then it will generate a code which I will type in to actually log in.
If I had a clue how to set up a service like this and get people like Yahoo, google, Twitter, The OpenID folks into it I would. I personally would efinitely use a service like this, and I think many business users would too.
the end of the web is near me too’s are everywhere.
I was talking with the Adaptive Blue guys today, and they mentioned “Twitter Connect.” I was wondering if I had just missed it, but apparently it just hasn’t been formally announced?
I really wish OpenID would just catch on already. Now we’re going to have to choose between Facebook Connect, Twitter Connect (or whatever they’ll call it) and Google?
Interesting Veronica — it’s worth noting that this is just me (and others) speculating about where Twitter could take this relatively simple “Sign In With Twitter” feature.
Obviously though, it seems plenty of other people are talking about the idea
IMO, I think it’s less important for OpenID to catch on now.
Personally, I care less about being able to use different IDs I already have to sign in.
I am more interested in the use case of picking a provider and using that to sign in instead.
We have implemented a flavor of this on our own. As Veronica mentioned, Glue (http://getglue.com) users can enter their twitter id and password and then Glue automatically synchronizes Twitter followers to Glue.
Google Friend Connect already supports OpenID and Twitter, so you don’t need to choose between them
i’m starting to empathize with Michael about twitter… don’t take it personal MG
start again on monday… @saysmeteam
Oh Twitter, how I love thee. Feeding my insatiable appetite for digital media and new knowledge.
I have never really found any value in Facebook. Facebook is basically Flickr, Youtube, and Twitter rolled into one. But separately all of those services are so much more powerful. Interlinking content helps with SEO too.
Happy Friday all!
what??
What??
I went digging around OAuth and found this post
http://www.huen...er-connect.html
yep, linked to that in the post.
Tipjoy was one of the first companies to release Twitter OAuth publicly, and it was obviously while developing it that it is exactly like Facebook Connect. There are very similar technical components as well.
The benefits get getting the social graph, and authorization to push update to the social network, are identical.
As a service maker, I love the idea behind both. It makes my life so much easier to have a sign-up process that just clicks through and to avoid asking the user to input their profile / friends into yet another service.
Good stuff Ivan, thanks.
Another big player in the connect market
We recently created our own “Sign in with Twitter” icon and do this for Posterous commenting — it sits right next to our Facebook connect icon.
It’s worked out very well. MG, you’re absolutely right. Everyone should be doing this.
http://blog.pos...menting-and-now
Did Twitter just pass gas? No, darn, my name is MG and i was about to blog about it.
Twitter is the tool of sheep
To be honest, I have to agree with this comment. What is this “TwitCrunch”. If Twitter was a listed company, you guys would be had for price manipulation. You may or not own shares in Twitter, but forgive me for thinking that you are attemtping to inflate the value of what is, really, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”…
Just found that @techcrunch provides its visitors leaving their twitter names option when commenting.
I used to leave my Twitter account in the website blank space. Great implemention!
If you’re a Rails developer looking to take advantage of the new system, I just added support for this to my TwitterAuth plugin (http://github.c...gh/twitter-auth). TwitterAuth already essentially did what “Sign in with Twitter” does, it was just a little more hacky without this last piece of the puzzle.
I signed into my Twitterfeed account today and went to add a new feed when I was asked to use the “new” sign in with twitter. Worked like a charm.
I don’t about this, the difference is that Facebook has REAL info about people, so it’s a natural form of ID, a lot of people don’t even have real names on Twitter. It would be cool for the social features, but you can just use the API for that.
Great idea. The openness of the twitter conversation concept makes it feel more trustworthy and less ‘empire strikes back’-ish. We’d love to connect our service to twitter so that twitter login credentials.
In Twitter API land, we call it OAuth buttons, in Techcrunch land they call it “Twitter Connect” so it’s buzzy enough.
Twitter OAuth has been in production for months, this is nothing new. The only thing new is the newly coined term for Twitter OAuth …… “Twitter Connect”
And here’s attribution to the inventor of the so called “Twitter Connect”, http://twibs.co...AuthButtons.php
i would rather like the name “Twitter Connect” than “twitter Oauth” because it sounds more meaningful to the common user!
I think its a fantastic step towards Twitter to the next level! It will grow the traffic on Twitter & it will also lead to increase of traffic on other sites thru Twitter
http://twt.fm/ is this it?
Twt.fm uses TwitterAuth, the Rails Twitter Authentication plugin I mentioned in an above post. Yes, it’s essentially the same thing as “Twitter Connect.”
I love the concept of Twitter Connect – anything that can simplify user login is a blessing.
There are a few downsides to it all. From my perspective they are:
1) as each major service provides this type of feature, (Facebook, MYSpace, OpenSocial, Twitter) you feel like you have to provide all the options and that can be clunky on your UI,
2) keeping up with any changes to the API can be a hassle and something you have to react to quickly,
3) if the auth service goes down your users can’t log in.
Our experience with Facebook Connect has been great – user feedback is that it makes it so much easier to login and share content. The downside is that when Facebook was down for maintenance that meant our members that used Facebook Connect were locked out. It does not happen very often – but when it does it makes you wish you had a SLA in place to ensure that you are not left in the dark during maintenance periods.
Thanks for the post – definitely something to follow.
Cheers – Eric
PickupPal.com
I think the added competition from Twitter and other services will allow more people to reach out and find new content. It’s all about the content.
Really, everyone that reads this blogs seems to be the anointed saint on everything Twitter and everything that comes out of it is “holier than thou” material that needs to be worshipped, yet again, by lemmings. How does being a twit help impact your life in a positive way? Go do some REAL good, as the “stream” just keeps you sucked in from doing something life changing and meaningful. Twits aren’t life changing. Just ask Ashton and his 1 million followers…
@YawnTwits Very profound indeed!! What are you doing on Twitter in that case??
Form me, Life is a lot simpler with twitter and without facebook and I don’t want to use twitter connect.
I am loving all those *connect* options. I really don’t care who manages to grab the attention of more people. Let them compete for giving us the best service, and let the best win, if not, then co-excisting is also good.
Way to go Twitter, I really love that platform.
I really rate Facebook Connect, if Twitter are introducing a similar platform then I’m looking forward to interacting through it
Great article. While FB and twitter both have their strengths and weaknesses… the ease of use for authentication/login is very beneficial for a variety of reasons for both users and website owners.
You have the ability to create a unique experience.
Twitters Oauth and FBconnect are changing the web one user at a time
We have chosen to implement both of them in http://www.tweetphoto.com
Cheers!
p.s. MG i like the way you respond to the comments.
Someone mentioned earlier that they can’t wait for a single UID, perhaps an e-mail address might do the trick.
Noticed yesterday that ChaCha has “Login with your Twitter accoun” in the upper right corner of their home page. http://ChaCha.com
It seems logical for this kind of universal login and activity update mechanism to be rolled out across all major sites and further – devices, supermarket checkouts, satnav etc. The desire to let friends know what we’re up to and the power of the messaging with company name, products, prices etc all over the internet is huge.
it would be so nice if they figured out a way to couple it to OpenID as well, and not just as a Provider, like all the others are doing, but as a Consumer too.
That with OAuth would be killer for me, I’m not just gonna use Twitter to sign on in other places, just as I won’t use FB Connect.
Very interesting concept.
Too bad there isn’t a twitter connect button to sign in to this (although you are asking for our twitter screename above).
I would be more likely to use twitter connect than facebook connect to comment on a blog, because on twitter I am more open ( I wouldn’t bore facebook real world friends with some of my interests), and more anonymous, harder to stalk or spam, yet it could draw those with shared opinions to my twitter feed.
I think twitter could out do facebook at this aspect of connection. Facebook is relatively too invasive and personal to throw to the marketing hounds.
As many others, I think this idea should be implemented, as as a social media and web product strategist, I myself never use Facebook Connect for these reasons, but I use OpenID and encourage it:
1)I use my facebook and Twitter accounts differently; my facebook being a little more “personal” in the way i update my status
2) I wish to engage in conversations via my Twitter account, which is sufficiently targeted at the niches that I am interested in. It is currently the way i like to interact with the people on the Web strategists that I never really met in real life
3) I have suffered identity frauds and bank a few years ago
In conclusion, in my opinion an integration of Twitter Connect and OpenID would be amazing. It would encourage me more to comment everywhere on the Web via my Twitter profile.
Twitter, please go for it.
Single sign-on from any privately owned company can only be a temporary fix until people wake up and figure out this is akin to letting Walmart or Wholefoods own your passport.
OpenID may have it’s faults, mainly that bigco’s can be make OpenIDs without having to support consuming OpenIDs created elsewhere – but at least its bottom line is not about controlling my identity as part of a profit margin.
I strongly believe in the greatness of letting people take their data with them, and Twitter should be applauded for this and it’s 2-way API’s. But, no more private single-sign ons, please.
“If you’re reading an article, you could tweet out the article with one click without leaving the page.”
This can already be done on the publisher side with integration of the twitthis code.
http://www.jjra...itthiscode.html
Granted, you have to log into twitter after hitting the “twitthis” button but most twitter users have their twitter login codes embedded into their browsers.
Just what we need. More ways to login.
between facebook, myspace, twitter, and wow, not to mention other social outlets. i realized that i’m really putting myself out there…
I agree, Twitter should move it’s authorization component along quickly! Especially since you can authenticate with Twitter using Google Friend Connect already.
“This feature is temporarily disabled.
Thanks for your patience while we work to restore it.”
http://twitter....th/authenticate
If you’re interested in WordPress/Twitter integration, please take a look at my plugin, “Twit Connect.” I’ll probably standardize it using Peter’s buttons on the next version.
http://www.voic...=683#twc_button
Thanks Shannon
OpenID concept has not yet caught on. Twitter has thrived on tweet concept, a 140 chrs micro blogging concept. The sooner web portals start their connect services, people will turn to OpenID concept as would be practically impossible to remember the ids provided by various platforms.
Twitter is wonderfully open but this functionality is not a client technology like Facebook Connect. If you are a site owner looking for ways to implement this kind of technology easily Gigya’s Socialize provides single API access to Twitter, Facebook Connect and MySpaceID along with the top webmail providers. The product is a true client technology that aggregates the connections for all three and manages any and all updates on the backend, and adding new identity and social data providers as they open up. http://gigya.co.../Socialize.aspx
loving it like McDonald’s…LOL
I do like the idea of having twitter connect, it makes more sense to have a simple service like twitter to shoot out notifications how ‘what your reading.. or what you currect score/level is if your online gaming’.. fb connect can be used for more complex sharing applications…
This is an interesting development. I have the following to say on it:
1) Many people use specific social networks for different purposes. It may not be a bad thing to have an ability to carry your Twitter identity round with you as well as your Facebook one, one as a business identity and the other as personal
2) Is there enough identity information on Twitter for a portable Twitter identity to be useful? Twitter actually holds very little personal information to help identify who you are, meaning that if you used your Twitter ID to sign into a new site, you’d probably end up adding address details, company and contact details to that site anyway
3) I am unsure that people would following others so freely if they started getting invitations to also “friend” that person on other networking sites, should Twitter add this function. Unlike Facebook, there is mostly no personal connection to a Twitter contact — you follow them because you like what they post on Twitter, not because you like them or want a deeper relationship; how many of those contacts would you want to add on other networking sites?
4) It would be great to have a single standard for identity portability, and logic says this should be OpenID, but while things like JanRain’s RPX exist support multiple “standards” needn’t be a problem for website owners.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Because Twitter offers a behemoth of an API, and easy OAuth processes, a developer who wanted to could already implement a “Twitter Connect” right this moment. Let’s stray from the notion that a little graphic and the word “Connect” will make anything more real than it is right this very second.
Twitters OAuth connections (which are not exactly “new” anymore) have already opened the gates of “Twitter Connect”. My point is this, think with your creative brain not your logical one. your logical brain will insist on having a packaged product called “Twitter Connect” before you will be able to put 2 and 2 together… your creative brain will allow you to see that it already exists! (Just nobody is really using it that way… yet… but they will. A Twitter developer is a bit more resourceful and bit more of a “thinker” than an average platform-developer (or blogger for that matter)… they don’t need a candy apple package to help them realize something is pretty. I’m sure there are plenty of folks already working in it in their projects at this very moment.) (The ability exists right now to give someone a “Connect” button for Twitter, and then start taking actions on their behalf (like commenting on this post or renting a netflix, etc… it’s all available through the marriage of oAuth and Twitter API calls.)
In other words, your post is a day late and a dollar shy.
Twitter Connect for WordPress – http://www.voic...swhitley/?p=701
I’ve updated the Twit Connect plugin. Blog owners can now register their blogs with Twitter as an application and run their own oAuth process (Twitter Connect).
Could you please, in your articles, be more constructive? haha. The article is full of “But one key difference”s.
I know that there can be many “but”s, but what about making things simpler for non-networking-and-API-ing-geeks?