On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 5:30 PM, funkatron <funkat...@gmail.com> wrote: > ... maybe helping Twitter's engineering > team understand the problems better, should be top priority.
I think Twitter's engineering team does understand the issues. But I think the primary responsibility lies with us developers, and I for one don't see the point in investing effort building desktop Twitter applications, given a. They're tough to scale down to mobile platforms, and mobile usage seems to be where the growth and action are in social media, and b. oAuth or not, desktop applications are difficult to secure. c. The Streaming API isn't designed to play well with desktops / laptops / mobiles. > I agree that much of this seems like beating a dead horse, but I'd > also like to see more official response about it, even if it's just > "hey, we know, and this is just the tradeoff we need to make." > Otherwise, I think we're providing feedback as requested on the API in > general, and authentication in particular. The environment in which Twitter and the Twitter development community operate is changing rapidly. The *desktop* oAuth tradeoffs may have made sense a year ago. before the huge growth spurt in awareness and usage of Twitter in 2009. As I've noted, I think the *server* oAuth tradeoffs still make sense. I think we need to take the advice of Wayne Gretzky and "skate to where the puck is going to be." I should also note that I have never used a "desktop Twitter client". I installed one once on my Linux workstation, and got frustrated by the Adobe AIR platform issues. The client wasn't giving me any functionality I couldn't get from a free server like HootSuite or even from Firefox, and there wasn't anything else I wanted that used AIR. So I'm not losing anything if "desktop oAuth" doesn't get "enhanced". -- M. Edward (Ed) Borasky http://borasky-research.net "I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God." ~Alan Hovhaness
