Twitter suspends UberTwitter and other UberMedia apps.
If you’ve been lately using UberTwitter (a popular Blackberry Twitter client) or Twidroyd (another Twitterclient for Android phones), then you might have experienced problems logging in to your account. The reason why? It’s because Twitter began blocking third-party twitter clients which violated their policies.
UberMedia, which currently owns UberTwitter, Twidroyd, and newly-acquired Tweetdeck, was accused of privacy and monetization violations as well as Trademark infringement for using the “Tweet” term in their developed applications.
Carolyn Penner, Twitter’s spokeswoman further explained:
We ask all developers in Twitter ecosystem to abide by a simple set of rules that are in the interests of our users, as well as the health and vitality of the platform as a whole.
We often take actions to enforce these rules; in fact, on an average day we turn off more than one hundred services that violate our API rules of the road. This keeps theecosystem fair for everyone.
Today we suspended several applications, including UberTwitter, twidroyd and UberCurrent, which have violated Twitter policies and trademarks in a variety of ways. These violations include, but aren’t limited to, a privacy issue with private Direct Messages longer than 140 characters, trademark infringement, and changing the content of users’ Tweets in order to make money.
We’ve had conversations with UberMedia, the developer of these applications, about policy violations since April 2010, when they first launched under the name TweetUp – a term commonly used by Twitter users and a trademark violation. We continue to be in contact with UberMedia and hope that they will bring the suspended applications into compliance with our policies soon.
On the other hand, UberMedia is still on the process of sorting things out to comply with Twitter’s demand of policy compliance. As an assurance, Bill Gross, owner of UberMedia, even posted in his twitter account: UberTwitter & Twidroyd users: We have made the changes Twitter requested. As soon as Twitter reactivates, you will be live again. Thx!
Alternatives for UberMedia Apps
While waiting for UberTwitter and Twidroyd to be live again, Twitter encourages users to trydownloading Twitter for Blackberry, Twitter for Android and other official Twitter applications instead. You can download it here. Moreover, users can try Twitter’s mobile web site (mobile.twitter.com).