Twitterank posted to my Twitter account without my permission.

Yeah, buddy! Uncheck the box!

It worked though--I clicked the link, went to the site and checked my Twitterank. But I made sure to uncheck that box, having seen what an ass you'd made of yourself by publishing your embarrassingly low score :)

obscured opt-out + password anti-pattern == poop

If it's not a scam then it's at the very most a completely useless and lame app.

same crap that happened with me at goodreads. poop heads.

Yeah, he should have the box unchecked by default, but your title is misleading. You put in your username/password and clicked "go!" -- so you really DID give Twitterank permission to post to your Twitter account. Oops.

What does that score even mean anyway? The entire thing is creepy!!

Hey Lane, i am sorry to say i have to side with TwitterRank here. it is like, totally lame, but there IS a checkbox.... That said, it is horrible how this reminds me of the early facebook apps

I understand what you're saying, Lane, and I'm overwhelmingly in favor of unchecking boxes like that by default. But when I saw that I was being asked for my Twitter username *and* password, I not only scrutinized that initial page and its little checkbox, but I also clicked through to the FAQs to read about what he claims to do (or not do) with passwords before I tried it out.

Frankly, I think this falls into a similar category as sites who offer to scan your Gmail contacts for other users you already know, and then spam your whole address book. It's not cool for them to spam people, but dood... I never give out my email password for those things, no matter what!

These guys might suck, but caveat emptor.

yea, so i was duped. there's a first time for everything, phishing included. thanks for kicking tushy, good buddy...

Sigh. If only twitter supported oauth.

Then people like the creators of twitterank could completely ignore it and ask for your username and password anyways.

emily, i'm genuinely surprised that, as a user interface designer, that's the argument you would make. i was putting in my username and password* because i wanted to see my twitterank, and when i hit "go," that's what i was giving my permission for. or to put it a little differently: i define "my permission" as "I intended for it to do that," and therefore said it was ok. you appear to be defining "my permission" as: anything i didn't agree to that was obscured in the interface, including any secondary action that i wasn't intending and wasn't well-communicated but that the system pushed on me.

it is, as they say, genuinely bad design. a checkbox that's not particularly well displayed, default auto-checked, only tangentially related to the main act being communicated by the functional area, and which doesn't at least perform a secondary check with a warning or pop-up for a relatively drastic action like *pretending to be you* is at best a terrible design decision and at worst done with deceitful intent. i'm guessing the latter here, for the same reasons ming yeow pointed out were rampant on facebook in the early days; growth at the cost of good. and the argument that it's just fine and dandy as long as all the permissions line up is one for lawyers, not designers.

* and, yes, i changed it before i did it, then changed it back afterwards. despite the face that oberkirch was kidding, it's still good policy when something's asking for your password.

Lane, like I said before, the checkbox should be unchecked by default. We agree there. I just thought your title was misleading. I also thought posting this thread to tell Ryo, the creator, that he was a complete jerk, was uncalled for. If you want change, calling people names is the least effective way to achieve it. BTW, I've emailed him to tell him he should have that box default unchecked.

totally understand, but we still disagree. i don't consider my title misleading. i did not give my conceptual permission, even if a misdesigned application took it from me anyway.

as for the jerk part, be fair. i didn't call him a jerk. my accusation of him was conditional: he's upset a number of people with his actions, but perhaps it was accidental, and he didn't know what he was doing. he's not a jerk, if that's the case -- but he still has to turn off the checkbox and prove it. :)

Hi. I'm Ryo, the "jerk" behind Twitterank.

I think you all have a good point. I didn't default that checkbox lightly, but the cold truth is, nobody would've heard of Twitterank otherwise. It makes me feel dirty, but it's not like anybody's getting hurt (and if a low twitterank hurts your feelings, you're taking it waaay too seriously).

Nonetheless, you guys have made me feel guilty enough that I've made a couple of changes:
1) The checkbox label is red. Hopefully that'll make it more noticeable.
2) The button will accurately reflect what you're about to do. The label now reads "Get my twitterank and tweet it" or "Get my twitterank" depending on the state of the checkbox.

I'm also working on a new algorithm that'll work without passwords, but that'll take a little time.

BTW, your score was calculated when a flawed algorithm was being used. The new experimental algorithm scores you at 176 (99th percentile).

Ryo-

Sounds like you addressed the 90% of the UI issue. The last 10% is user interaction / expectations dogma, that anything less that "opt-in" won't solve.

And, while doing so you I think you found the "real problem", which was Lane's twitterrank was way to low, which was the first thing I noticed.

Well done!

-Scott

"conceputal permission" hehe