OAuth is "An open protocol to allow secure API authentication in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications." In practical terms, OAuth is a mechanism for a Consumer to request protected resources from a Service Provider on behalf of a user. Net::OAuth provides: * classes that encapsulate OAuth messages (requests and responses) * message signing * message serialization and parsing. * 2-legged requests (aka. tokenless requests, aka. consumer requests) Net::OAuth does not provide: * Consumer or Service Provider encapsulation * token/nonce/key storage/management Please refer to the OAuth spec: http://oauth.net/documentation/spec