With wide adoption of collaboration platforms and social networks, application developers have the opportunity to connect users with their data wherever they are on the Web. Connecting users with their data results in improved day-to-day efficiency by eliminating data silos and also allows developers to differentiate their applications from the competition.

OAuth provides the ability for these applications to access a user’s data securely, without requiring the user to take the scary step of handing over an account password.

Types of functionality provided by OAuth-enabled APIs include the following: