luis is a co-founder and social software architect at SyndeoLabs, and a director at Exist Global. he likes building small web toys a whole lot. More ...

quick links to the good stuff

  • 25 First Dates 25 May 2009
  • True Crime: Confessions of a Criminal Mastermind 17 Feb 2009
  • Finding Your Soul Mate: A Statistical Analysis 27 Jan 2009
  • Sex and Schrodinger's Cat 07 January 2009
  • An Extended Rant on Heroes 26 September 2008
  • Zero Barrier 05 May 2008
  • Sweatshop Blogging Economics 08 April 2008
  • The Doomsday Singularity 25 February 2008
  • Piracy and Its Impact on Philippine Music 21 January 2008
  • The Manila Pen-etration by the Hotelier Antonio Trillanes 29 November 2007
  • Journey of a Thousand Heroes 17 December 2006
  • Shake, Rattle & LOL 30 December 2005

    elsewhere online

    • Last.FM
    • Del.icio.us
    • Flickr
    • Plurk
    • Multiply
    • Stumbleupon

    guttervomit

    • 1

      Twitterank Fear-Mongering

      14 Nov 2008

      A rather interesting internet meme came and went over the past 36 hours regarding a humble new Twitter app called Twitterank. You can find most of the relevant material in this handy Buzzfeed collection, so if you missed out on the freakshow, you may want to check that link out first.

      What was interesting about Twitterank actually has nothing to do with the app itself. It was the way people seemed to react to it. Here was a guy how threw together a cute little app (something that we here at Syndeo do all the time), and after a brief period of seeing his work really catch on, he gets publicly mauled for allegedly stealing people’s Twitter passwords. Never mind that people give their Twitter passwords to literally dozens of applications already (or did you just happen to forget about your Twitter desktop app, your Facebook widget, your iGoogle Gadget, your Ping.FM account, your auto-follow script, and any of the myriad other Twitter third-party apps you’ve tried but never really used all that much?).

      This ZDNET article for me was the freakshow ringmaster. Incendiary and dismissive at the same time, the author never even bothered to contact Twitterank creator Ryo Chijiiwa before stringing him up for the mob. It even goes so far as to offer a screenshot of the Twitterank source code (and by that, I mean the HTML code, geez) as further proof of Chijiwa’s nefariousness. The guys at Syndeo and I all had a good laugh about that one:

      @donevan: “Proof” that Twitterank is stealing your passwords: http://twitpic.com/lfm9. Who’s gullible now?

      @jasontorres: “I’m in your account stealin’ your tweets.” LOL!

      @helloluis: @donevan Holy crap I hope nobody reads the evil comments in our HTML “source” code!

      @donevan: @helloluis I did put some stuff there about alien conspiracies re: searching for human intelligence, and how they’ve failed at it apparently

      @helloluis: @donevan Thank goodness I remembered to delete those comments about that underaged girl you met at Mugen. Whew!

      @donevan: @helloluis You’ve clearly mistaken me for @monduntu.

      It’s this kind of irrational fear-mongering that drives me nuts sometimes. Seriously, what makes you trust Twitteriffic with your password over Twitterank? Both of them are third-party apps developed primarily by a solitary individual. Certainly Craig Hockenberry may have built up a bigger Internet reputation for himself over the past few years, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be stealing those precious, precious passwords as well.

      After some discussion, the guys and I came to the rather oblique conclusion that Twitterank wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near this same amount of flack if Chijiwa had bothered to throw a skin on his work before releasing. People are stupid both ways, after all. They’ll trust you if you’re good-looking, and they’ll distrust you if you’re ugly. Unfortunately, Twitterank erred towards the latter.

      PS. If you’re one of those paranoid individuals who changed their Twitter.com passwords upon reading that ZDNET article … it’s not so fun having to change your passwords across all your Twitter third-party apps, huh?

      One Response to “Twitterank Fear-Mongering”

      1. Hunter Says:
        November 14th, 2008 at 8:27 am

        Time for twitter to start using oAuth. Would avoid most of these issues.

      Leave a Reply

     

    categories

    • Home
    • Business (103)
      • Acquisitions (15)
      • Goin' Legit (61)
    • Media (323)
      • Artwork (12)
      • Books (21)
      • Comics (8)
      • Movies (140)
      • Music (102)
      • Photography (31)
      • Poker (10)
      • TV (29)
    • Randomness (299)
    • Site News (8)
    • Technology (273)
      • Games (13)
      • Hardware (111)
      • Social Software (45)
      • Software (131)
    • Tutorials (16)

    archives

    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
    • December 2008
    • November 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
    • June 2008
    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • March 2008
    • February 2008
    • January 2008
    • December 2007
    • November 2007
    • October 2007
    • September 2007
    • August 2007
    • July 2007
    • June 2007
    • May 2007
    • April 2007
    • March 2007
    • February 2007
    • January 2007
    • December 2006
    • November 2006
    • October 2006
    • September 2006
    • August 2006
    • July 2006
    • June 2006
    • May 2006
    • April 2006
    • March 2006
    • February 2006
    • January 2006
    • December 2005
    • November 2005
    • October 2005
    • September 2005
    • August 2005
    • July 2005
    • June 2005
    • May 2005
    • April 2005
    • March 2005
    • February 2005
    • January 2005
    • December 2004
    • November 2004
    • October 2004
    • September 2004
    • August 2004
    • July 2004
    • June 2004
    • May 2004
    • April 2004
    • March 2004
    • February 2004
    • January 2004
    • December 2003
    • November 2003
    • October 2003
    • September 2003
    • August 2003
    • July 2003
    • June 2003
    • May 2003
    • April 2003
    • March 2003
    • February 2003
    • January 2003
    • December 2002
    • November 2002
    • October 2002
    • September 2002
    • July 2002
    • May 2002
    • April 2002
    • February 2002
    • January 2002
    • December 2001
    • November 2001
    • October 2001

    friends

    • Dementia
    • Gabby
    • Gail
    • Gibbs
    • Helga
    • Ia
    • Ina
    • Jason
    • Kaye
    • Lauren
    • Lizz
    • Luna
    • Mae
    • Migs
    • Mike
    • Ryan
    • Sacha
    • Vicky
    • Vida
    • Yuga

    search

    notes

    Guttervomit v3 went online in January, 2008. It uses Wordpress for publishing, and was built largely with Adobe Illustrator and Textmate. Logotype and navigation is set with Interstate.