A Better Calling Card: Twitter Challenges Facebook Connect
In the old days, self-important people use to carry calling cards. Now we have Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites to turn us all into mini-celebrities. So what's the new calling card online? That position's being jockeyed for as we speak, and different contenders are taking very different approaches.
Twitter released an important new feature to selected developers yesterday that could make it a compelling alternative to the fast growing Facebook Connect system for logging into sites around the web.
Google has its own Friend Connect service and many people use their own website as an ID and data store. That's the goal with all these systems: giving new sites you visit secure access to information about you and your friends from other sites so that the new site can better personalize its service to you. There's reason to be particularly excited about Twitter's entry into this field.
Facebook Connect is being adopted rapidly by sites all over the web seeking to let people sign in with a verified identity, some social data and access to publish activity back onto the Facebook Newsfeed. Now Twitter looks to be offering a similar feature and it could be a better implementation of the same idea.
Yahoo's Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote an in depth article about the new "Sign in With Twitter" functionality yesterday. He celebrates the move as particularly adherent to agreed upon standards - no proprietary "special sauce" clouds interoperability as happens with Facebook Connect. He also draws a distinction between Facebook's offering a social layer to websites vs. Twitter's new feature and its work with 3rd party sites and services that are already tightly integrated with Twitter. We're not so sure that second distinction is so important, though. We can imagine this new Twitter feature being implemented far and wide.
The idea is that sites using the new Sign in With Twitter tool will go through a relatively simple process to gain permission to access your data from Twitter. They will see if your browser is already logged in to Twitter, then they will either give you a pop-up window to log in there or they will skip directly to asking Twitter to ask you if you'd like to give access to this new site. You never have to give the new site your Twitter password, but you can give it permission to access private data like Direct Messages and the ability to post in your name.
It seems quite similar to Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect in a number of ways. It may be more exciting though, because Twitter is a fundamentally different beast.
All social networking services these days want to be "a platform" - but it's really true for Twitter. From desktop apps to social connection analysis programs to services that will Twitter through your account when a baby monitoring garment feels a kick in utero - there's countless technologies being built on top of Twitter.
It's always been that way, Twitter's API is open at its core. Twitter would be nowhere near where it is today without its developer community.
Facebook, on the other hand, not only uses a non-interoperable system of authentication in Facebook Connect - it's also not based fundamentally on openness. It's based on giving access to your information to a limited set of the people you know. No one can see your profile at all without your explicit permission. The company has long held that protecting users' privacy is of the utmost importance. Of course Facebook is still about sharing, it's not completely closed, and it could be toying with and changing our understanding of privacy more than we know.
Is this just an accident? Hammer-Lahav doesn't think so and put it quite well on the OpenID mailing list last fall. "They never made the effort to truly engage the community and understand either specifications [OpenID/OAuth]," he wrote. "Second, for the most part, they reused existing Facebook pieces to create Facebook Connect. Those pieces could have been converted or added support for OpenID and OAuth a long time ago. And third, this is exactly what they wanted to do - these are some of the brightest minds in the industry and they know what they are doing."
The point is, though, that when I give you my Facebook "calling card" using Facebook Connect, that system has a long list of do's and don'ts for what developers can do with the data. It's letting sites borrow the data - not setting data free.
Twitter's version of the calling card should be more developer friendly and it's already more standards adherent, which is another way to say developer friendly. Prove you are who you say you are to Twitter and it will give sites you approve a big open field of your data to work with. In other words, web developers should be able to do a whole lot more for me when I give them my Twitter calling card than if I give them one from Facebook.
At least that's the way I suspect it will unfold in the near term. This battle is far, far from over though and it's an important one to the future of the connected web.
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Maybe Twitter will be less restrictive on "fourth party" implementations than Facebook is - embeddable services need to solve the login problem just like destination sites do, and they can't properly do it under the current FB TOS:
http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Facebook_Connect_Fourth_Party_Code
With all the security issues Twitter has been having lately, I am not sure this is something they should focus on right now. In addition, this sounds like a strategic mistake: Twitter is a communication tool, not an identity tool.
I agree with xavierv, is Twitter moving from communications to identity a good idea?
I'd like to understand how this fits in with the myriad of desktop Twitter apps, looks to me like it's aimed squarely at third party web apps.
Twitter opening this up is a great idea and might push Facebook towards copying Twitter (again) and be more open in its approach. Pigs might fly first of course..
As you say, the approach for this service is very different from Facebook. It is not so much about your friends and family - there is not a way to identify those inside Twitter and there is also not much meta data available. I would love to see Twitter introduce a sub layer of meta data to tweets.. but then I would also love to see proper group functionality ;)
i'm keen to see movement on this. it's a race that so far facebook is winning and that really only benefits facebook - not other sites, not developers nor users.
Companies like Twitter, Facebook, AOL, Microsoft (Windows Live) are all pushing to have their own single-sign on authentication system to other websites. If all of them support OpenID, the ideal goal of needing only 1 ID to sign in to all web services can still be achieved.
Otherwise, it's very over for OpenID.
I don't think so! Twitter hasn't really established itself as a stable secure platform for really much of anything. Secure more so than stable for sure. And ALSO, twitter's future is VERY much up in the air. I don't want to bother with credentials like that. Thanks, but I'll be using Facebook connect. Interesting how I'm using Facebook connect to make this comment.
I don't think so! Twitter hasn't really established itself as a stable secure platform for really much of anything. Secure more so than stable for sure. And ALSO, twitter's future is VERY much up in the air. I don't want to bother with credentials like that. Thanks, but I'll be using Facebook connect. Interesting how I'm using Facebook connect to make this comment.
I think this business should likely be kept in the realm of OpenID: one communal standard, so to speak, before it gets spread thither and yon and becomes meaningless. Twitter has no inherent security or promise of same. Facebook is still writing its book on it. GoOgle? well...
You can see an example of how works the twitter OAuth system here: http://FollowMeButton.com
Love the idea! Ironically, I accessed this article through Facebook Connect.
Interesting, but as I am not a developer, I would like to read a piece about these differences as relates to the user. I have so many id's I am feeling like 'Sybil'. I love the idea of moving to just one. But, which one? What are the pros and cons of using one over another? Maybe because I am old, but I tend to be pretty protective of my virtual identity and skeptical about allowing services access my and my friends' information to 'customize' my experience.
I agree, strategically, it seems Twitter is just trying to keep up with the Jones'... Although, I'd like to see Twitter go beyond simply being a communication tool to integrate in a more open manner than Facebook Connect. Guess time will tell. Great stuff, thanks for the heads up :-)
Maria Reyes-McDavis
Social Marketing with Impact
I don't think Twitter as an identity tool will work anywhere near as good as Facebook if only for the simple fact that Twitter doesn't have as much information about me (160 character bio and that's all...) I'm not very technical so I could be way off base here but that's my initial reaction.
Just to be clear, Sign in with Twitter doesn't compete with Facebook Connect at all; nor is it (at least at this time) trying to be an identity system.
What it actually does is allow a Twitter user to login into a Twitter-using application or web service (like TwitPic, for example) and instead of the app asking for a username and password, the user clicks on the Sign in with Twitter button, which uses Twitter's spiffy new OAuth implementation for authenticating users and authorizing actions the app can take on the user's behalf.
The bottom line: no more worries about the possibility of rogue applications storing a Twitter user's credentials. This will allow people to feel safer about using the growing ecosystem of Twitter applications.
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Most of you are missing the point (except Albert). This move is to prevent rogue apps from stealing your Twitter credentials. It was the work of Twitter that spawned the OAuth initiative and I'm glad to see it finally being used. I don't think this is a new development either as the app TwitterMass uses OAuth and the documentation for it has been on the Twitter API wiki for a while now. I think all 3rd party apps should be forced to use it. After the Mikeyy fiasco, it was a PITA to update my password on all the Twitter based services I use. Open standards will win out in the end. Screw facebook.
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
Haha! Logging in with Twitter. That's hilarious. That's like playing guitar with strings that occasionally disappear.
IMHO twitter is better than facebook ... hehe
I think to begin with, this, via OAuth, will offer a far more secure authentication than third-party apps have at the moment - where users have to willingly hand out credentials and hope they're not stored or misued. I agree with Albert (above) on that much.
But I do think eventually this will see a shift in our perception of Twitter, more along the lines of what Xavier says - to be more of an identity. Unlike him, though, I do think this could good be a good thing.
As Ian says, people use specific social networks for different purposes. For me, Facebook is too full of old friends and family that I'm connected to for more nostalgic reasons - my identity there isn't 'up to date' as such, I use Twitter for more relevant things I'm interested in right now.
My article on Twitter sign-in in:
http://hibbins.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/4th-time-around/
Uhh why isn't this OpenID? Seems like an abuse of OAuth to me.
I like facebook for social networking and keeping track of my friends but its no bueno when it comes to discovering bands. I find the layout of myspace to be nauseating so I've been using www.putiton.com to find and follow new music acts.
Facebook is much better.
Facebook Connect is being adopted rapidly by sites all over the web seeking to let people sign in with a verified identity, some social data and access to publish activity back onto the Facebook Newsfeed. Now Twitter looks to be offering a similar feature and it could be a better implementation of the same idea.
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.
I use Facebook Connect all the time, it very convenient.