Twitter has just announced in its user help center that it has “suspended UberTwitter and twidroyd for violating our policies.” Twitter acknowledged that it normally suspends “hundreds of applications” that violate policies, but this time around it is sharing this information “because today’s suspension may affect a larger number of users.”
We spoke with Twitter communications director Carolyn Penner and she told us that this was the result of discussion that have been on-going since April 2010. Read on for details.
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The announcement goes on to suggest users that normally use Twitter with Twidroyd or UberTwitter try Twitter for Blackberry, Twitter for Android or other official Twitter apps.
We have suspended UberTwitter and twidroyd for violating our policies.
Every day, we suspend hundreds of applications that are in violation of our policies. Generally, these apps are used by a small number of users. We are taking the unusual step of sharing this with you because today’s suspension may affect a larger number of users.
We are committed to helping you continue to use Twitter during the disruption of these applications. You can download Twitter for Blackberry, Twitter for Android and other official Twitter apps here. You can also try our mobile web site or apps from other third-party developers.
We’ve reached out to UberTwitter and Twidroyd for comment but haven’t yet received a response. We will update this story as soon as we do.
According to Twitter, the reason these apps were suspended were for a variety of policy violations, from trademark issues to privacy issues with Direct Messages. Here is the statement we received from Twitter:
We ask all developers in the 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 the ecosystem 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.
Reactions from around Twitter are varied, support for Twitter to questioning of its motives in suspending third-party apps while promoting its own.
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