In a very aggressive move today, Twitter suspended UberTwitter and Twidroyd, two Twitter clients owned by UberMedia.
While Twitter says they’ve been in discussions with UberMedia since April about various issues, and who knows what’s gone on behind closed doors, but it seems like the people who lost out in today’s move was the users.
Suspending these applications without warning the users (or UberMedia) interrupted services for the users and Twitter’s last tweet those users could see was advertising Twitter’s own competing clients.
Twitter’s opinion could definitely be that they think it’s in the best interest of Twitter users to use Twitter’s own clients, but for one reason or another A LOT of people were using these alternative applications. I bet the reason most often cited is that they feel that the alternative applications are actually better.
Thus, the appearance is that Twitter did this more to hurt UberMedia than to really benefit Twitter users in any way. Shouldn’t Twitter be thinking more about the users here? They cite privacy implications and affiliate links, but I don’t think these things were hurting users as much as shutting off their normal access to Twitter without warning.
Twitter’s already had some issues with the developer community which helped it grow so much, and I don’t imagine this situation is going to help those relationships. It will be interesting to watch this situation moving forward as Twitter becomes more focused on their own revenue goals.