

Lanyrd no longer requires write access to your Twitter account - simonw
http://lanyrd.com/blog/2012/twitter-read-only/

======
simonw
This change has been a long time coming. Originally, we asked for write
permissions because it wasn't possible to upgrade from a read token to a write
token at a later date, and we needed a small subset of write operations
(primarily follow/unfollow, but we've also experimented with updating Twitter
lists).

Earlier this year, Twitter made it possible to request either kind of token
when making the initial OAuth request. We tried to implement read-by-default,
upgrade-to-write against this but it turned out not to quite work - a user
could upgrade to a write token when we prompted to them, but then if they
attempted to sign in to the site in the future Twitter would prompt them to
downgrade to a read-only token.

So in the end, we implemented it using a method we could have all along - by
setting up two different Twitter OAuth applications (called "Lanyrd (read-
only)" and "Lanyrd (full-access)") and doing our initial signin auth against
the read-only one, then asking for read-write permission against the full-
access one when the user first attempts a write-requiring action.

I'm very glad we've solved this now. It was only a small vocal group that
complained about us asking for too many permissions, but they absolutely had a
point.

~~~
nodata
> It was only a small vocal group that complained about us asking for too many
> permissions, but they absolutely had a point.

Nice to see you acknowledge this. Too often the "small vocal group" of experts
is put in the same category as a bunch of troublemakers.

------
Kartificial
Nice to read that somebody actually cares about the permissions they ask and
provide a careful approach to asking the user the appropriate permissions when
needed.

------
melvinmt
While I applaud this decision something struck to me as BS:

> Twitter's JavaScript follow button isn't appropriate for us for a few
> reasons: firstly, it requires JavaScript (almost all of Lanyrd's
> functionality works both with and without JavaScript turned on)

Is Javascript really an issue in 2012? I mean, people can hardly use
Twitter.com itself without JS turned on.

~~~
simonw
In part, it's a matter of stubborn principle. I don't like the way the web is
trending towards JavaScript being required for most websites, and I'm
determined to lead by example with Lanyrd.

That said, there are sound technical reasons for working without JavaScript.
Our mobile web app, <http://m.lanyrd.com/> uses pushState and HTML5 offline
caching if available, but falls back to working as regular HTML pages if
JavaScript isn't available. This made it easy for us to add support for older
devices, particularly older BlackBerrys, which choked horribly on our
JavaScript - we simply avoid executing JS on those devices entirely, giving
them a perfectly functional degraded experience with very little extra
development work needed.

------
illumen
Now make the site design pretty, and tell us why it's useful?

~~~
simonw
Prettiness is subjective - I like our current design, and we've had a lot of
praise for it, but clearly it isn't to everyone's taste. We've recently
expanded our design team so we'll be making a bunch of changes in the near
future.

We're useful in helping people figure out which conferences and events they
should be going to. We have comprehensive event listings for a wide range of
different topics (try <http://lanyrd.com/topics/user-experience/> or
<http://lanyrd.com/topics/web-design/> or <http://lanyrd.com/topics/startups/>
or <http://lanyrd.com/topics/ios/> for example). If you sign in with Twitter
we'll show you events the people you are following are speaking at, attending
or tracking which we've found works extremely well as a recommendation
mechanism. You can also subscribe to emails with suggested events so you don't
have to keep visiting the site.

We can also help with networking. Here's our searchable list of the 128 people
we know are attending LeWeb London today <http://lanyrd.com/2012/leweb-
london/attendees/> \- and here are four of them who have "investor" in their
Twitter bios: <http://lanyrd.com/2012/leweb-london/attendees/?q=investor>

For events that we have a schedule for, our iPhone and Android/Mobile Web apps
will store it offline so you can quickly check what's happening during the
event.

If you're a conference speaker, you can use us to build up a profile of the
talks you've given. Here's mine: <http://lanyrd.com/profile/simonw/>

If you organise conferences, you can use our speaker profile pages to find
speakers for your events (and watch videos of their presentations to see if
they'll be a good fit), e.g. <http://lanyrd.com/profile/paulg/>

Finally, we're building up an index of slides, notes and video from talks. If
you want to learn Scala for example, our collection of Scala talk videos might
be a good place to start: <http://lanyrd.com/topics/scala/video/>

------
sohn3
What's Lanyrd

~~~
simonw
Since you asked...

We're a YC company (Winter 2011) that helps people get more out of conferences
and professional events, by finding the right events to attend, meeting the
right people at the event and catching up on slides, notes and video
afterwards.

If you sign in to Lanyrd with Twitter we'll suggest events to you based on the
people you follow - including events your contacts are speaking at, attending
or just tracking through our site. Give us your email address and we'll send
you a semi-frequent email with new events your contacts are interested in.

You can also browse the site without signing in at all, or subscribe to our
RSS and iCal feeds. Here are some of our lists of upcoming events:

<http://lanyrd.com/topics/python/> \- 17 upcoming events

<http://lanyrd.com/topics/startups/> \- 45 upcoming events

<http://lanyrd.com/topics/javascript/> \- 59 upcoming events

Plus you can browse and search by location, e.g. events in London:
<http://lanyrd.com/places/london/> or Europe:
<http://lanyrd.com/places/europe/>

Finally, we have mobile apps designed to help you keep up to date with the
schedule, speakers and attendees while you're at an event. We recently updated
our iPhone app <http://lanyrd.com/iphone/> and we're currently working on a
new version of our Mobile Web / Android app <http://lanyrd.com/mobile/> \-
both iPhone and Mobile Web apps use offline storage so you can still see the
schedule etc even if you're travelling abroad or are on dodgy conference wifi.

~~~
debacle
> If you sign in to Lanyrd with Twitter we'll suggest events to you based on
> the people you follow

I did not know this. Thanks for the reply.

~~~
ed209
I did this for SXSW and was great. They have some really useful planning tools
and actually much better than what SXSW provided themselves.

