Twitter adds voice verification and more to its phone number based app login system

Twitter has launched a new experiment around its Digits offering. Available in limited release, Digits allows developers to add voice verification and lets users update phone numbers within their accounts. This is an expansion of a program that, beyond remembering passwords, allows users to sign up for apps just by using their phone number.

Announced at Twitter’s Flight conference in 2014, Digits utilizes text message verification to save users from having to remember what login service or information they used for any app. The idea was to streamline the authentication process, and now two new capabilities are available for both developers and users.

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One of today’s releases gives users another way to verify their identity in order to gain access to an app. By default, Digits authenticated access using text. But now users can enter that verification code using their voice. While an SMS text will suffice most of the time, Twitter says it opted to include a backup just in case.

This mechanism is useful for developers using Twitter’s login protocol. Utilizing Digits, developers can use one of Twitter’s assets to power authentication into their own apps, a process that will not require new users to create yet another account.

Recognizing that users change numbers sometimes, Twitter has added the ability to update phone numbers within accounts. If you happen to switch numbers, you won’t have to create a whole new account. Instead, by visiting the Digits website on any device, you can update your phone numbers within the service’s dashboard.

Digits is a part of Twitter’s Fabric offering, a set of developer SDKs the company hopes will expedite development of third-party apps on its platform. Other SDKs include crash reporting tool Crashlytics and Twitter’s ad network MoPub.

Developers who want to incorporate these two updates can simply upgrade their copy of Twitter’s Digits SDK. Although Digits is available in 191 countries, this particular experiment is only available to those on iOS and the Web in the U.S., India, and Brazil. Twitter did say that more clients and countries will be added “in the near future.”

Find out more about the new features in Twitter’s blog post on the news.