Editor’s Note: Twitter Inc. over the weekend allowed UberMedia’s three mobile phone apps to resume accessing its social media network. Among changes made by the company: its Blackberry app UberTwitter was renamed UberSocial to address copyright concerns.
Twitter Inc. on Friday suspended mobile app maker UberMedia’s three programs from its network for apparently violating the social media messaging service’s use policies.
The fast-growing Pasadena start-up has developed or acquired three programs — UberTwitter, Twidroyd, and UberCurrent – that provide Twitter users with a more attractive and efficient user interface on different smart phone platforms. UberMedia is in the process of acquiring TweetDeck, a multi-platform app with a desktop version that competes with Twitter products.
San Francisco-based Twitter told the trade publication Computerworld that the UberMedia apps violated Twitter policies and trademarks in a variety of ways, including “changing the content of users’ Tweets in order to make money.”
UberMedia Chief Executive Bill Gross said his company was in discussion with Twitter to get back on line. UberMedia is a spinoff of Gross’ Idealab tech incubator.
“The changes they asked us to make were very small,” Gross said in a statement. “Twitter has assured us that as soon as those changes were complete, they would reactivate our applications.”
UberMedia on Wednesday announced several updates to its Android app Twidroyd, including the ability to browse tweets without having a Twitter account or signing in. Twitter did not specify to what extent the update may have triggered its action.