You’re So Vain, I’ll Bet You Think This Post Is About You
July 28, 2009, 10:44 am
The one thing social media has taught me above all else is that we humans are a bunch of selfish, self-centered people. A new third party application called TwitViewer (no link because I don’t want to promote them) was recently released that ties into your Twitter account. According to its marketing, it allows you to “see who’s stalking you on Twitter.” I heard about this application because a few of the people I trust highly on Twitter seemed to be suddenly recommending it by sending out tweets that said, simply, “Want to know whos stalking you on twitter!?: http://TwitViewer.net”.
Well, of course I want to know who’s stalking me on Twitter! The application says it will show you the last 200 people who accessed your Twitter profile. That fact that ANY 200 people might be accessing my profile is of interest to me, but, yeah, I’d love to find out who’s checking me out. Like many third-party Twitter apps, it asked for my Twitter username and password, which should have been my first red flag. We’ve been taught since forever to never give your username and password for any service to anyone. Until recently, however, Twitter had no other way for third-party applications to access their system. Though the recent introduction of the Twitter API has changed this, not every application has begun using it. So, while I should have thought twice about it, I relied on the recommendation of a few of my trusted friends and entered my Twitter username and password.
As soon as I pressed “Submit” I realized why it was a bad idea. Sure, the application showed me about 200 user icons of people who supposedly had viewed my profile recently (though there’s no way to verify whether that’s true or not) but it also immediately sent a tweet to my followers using my account. And what did that tweet say?
“Want to know whos stalking you on twitter!?: http://TwitViewer.net.”
I learned three valuable lessons from this:
- Social networking sites that allow you to follow “trusted” people are only as secure as the “trusted” humans. And humans are not always that trustworthy.
- Never, under any circumstances, no matter what anyone says should you give your username and password for any service to ANYONE. It’s the first time in more than 20 years that I have violated this rule. The question, then, is why did I do it now?
- The answer: We are, on the whole, an incredibly self-centered society, and sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others are glaring proof of that. Not long after I signed up, I saw several more of the people I follow tweet the exact same message, indicating they had also fallen for the trap. The combination of recommendations from one or more trusted sources and the allure of gratifying our egos was too strong to keep us away.
This may seem like a rather cynical point of view, but I don’t agree. I don’t believe anyone acts in a completely selfless manner – even Mother Teresa believed she would be rewarded for her service in the afterlife. Knowing that we are appreciated, that we have some kind of social status, is a great motivating factor. This is as apparent in Facebook users who update their statuses thinking their friends actually care what they ate for lunch as it is in disgruntled employees who silently sabotage their companies because they feel they are under-paid and under-appreciated.
Acknowledging the importance of self worth and self status, and allowing people to feel their own improving, is a no-fail way to motivate employees to work better, customers to buy and even friends and family to show you more respect. If you make other people feel valued and respected, they’ll usually return the favor by working harder for you, sending you their business and telling others about you, and showing you even more love, warmth and respect so that you feel like the most important person in the world.
And, really, isn’t that all you want?
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What about mint.com? I have used their service for a while and love it, but it required me to enter usernames and passwords for my accounts. I realize this is against your cardinal rule, but it is so nice to have all my financial info consolidated in one place.
Since I have actually heard of Mint and know they are well trusted in the industry, I’d be less concerned about them. However, they should still implement oAuth and other methods that allow them to gain access to your social media accounts with you permission and your control. The beauty of oAuth is that Twitter maintains the ongoing list of who has access to your account, and you can quickly and safely add or revoke privileges from one interface. More sites that expose their APIs to third parties need to figure out ways to allow such access without exposing their users to fraud and identity theft.