In an announcement on the Twitter developers mailing list today, Matt Sanford, a developer at Twitter who has been leading the efforts to integrate Twitter API with OAuth, announced details on how the new OAuth would work. In the announcement, he released a preview of documentation for the new OAuth methods, how developers would integrate using a sample Ruby on Rails application, and what developers would need to know to integrate.Interestingly, the documentation also hints at other plans in Twitter's future as well. For instance, Sanford suggests users will be able to see what applications they have given access to and revoke that access. He also hints at a future catalog of applications and opportunity for developers registered within the API to be a part of that Catalog.
Announcement of such a catalog and authorization process has been speculated on for quite awhile now. It was mentioned as a possibility when I visited Twitter with Robert Scoble about a year ago. So seeing Twitter's plans to stick towards this path and continue towards this goal is welcome news to say the least. Also mentioned in the documentation is the suggestion that the basic auth API Twitter is using today will eventually be phased out.
Twitter plans to release the OAuth API to developers that are participating in the closed beta "by next week", and they have not announced a date it will open to the public yet. However with increased pressure to have better control over the applications that run on Twitter you can bet Twitter is now putting top priority on this particular issue.
Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.