The Twitter world is all, um, atwitter right now over the suspension of UberTwitter, a popular phone application that many a person use for sending out 140-character messages.
But why? Glad you asked: it’s technically called, I believe, “multiple violations of Twitter’s terms of service.”
Most notably is the fact that Ubermedia’s product uses “Twitter” in the name, which makes the actual company named “Twitter” pretty upset.
But here’s the “official” statement from our bird overlords, via TechCrunch:
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.
Of course, Twitter’s not nearly as upset as users, though; it’s not even worth your effort trying to load a search of “UberTwitter” in a Tweetdeck column, because the results speed by more quickly than Twitter crashes any time something major happens in the world. And if you do a quick Twitter search, you’re going to get about 3,000 new results cooked up by the time you actually get the page loaded.
The easy solution for you, dear UberTwitter user, is to just cave and get Twitter for iPhone, which is actually made by Twitter and therefor won’t be destroyed by our bird overlords.
The REALLY bad news about this is that Ubermedia — originally “Tweetup” then “Postup” before becoming “Uber” after buying “UberTwitter” to go along with Echofone and the like — just recently bought Tweetdeck too.
So there’s a chance that Twitter might try and kill off the application that actually makes it popular with a ton of people (instead of bothering to fix its own interface, you know). If that happens, there will be as TechCrunch suggested, a war going down in the world of Twitter.
Which is slightly cooler than Dungeons and Dragons, I know, but still important for the millions of people who actually utilize the interface for their jobs and such.