Twitter Suspends UberTwitter And Twidroyd For Violating Policies | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Suspends UberTwitter And Twidroyd For Violating Policies

techcrunch.com

117 pointswarp68 comments

"We haven't changed our policies, we're just enforcing them differently" - the 2011 catchphrase for platform providers

According to Twitter, the measure was taken after months of warnings:

"[Twitter] had conversations with UberMedia, the developer of these applications, about policy violations since April 2010"

"[S]everal applications, including UberTwitter, twidroyd and UberCurrent, [...] 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."

UberMedia CEO Bill Gross says these are new issues Twitter never brought up before:

“We just talked to Twitter and discussed the various issues they raise. It took us by surprise because they didn’t raise them before."

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/18/ubermedia-bill-gross-twitte...

At the very least, UberMedia knew that Twitter frowns upon the use of the terms 'twitter' and 'tweet' in the name of a 3rd party app, as those are trademarks owned by Twitter.

But of course UberMedia had to act surprised, what other explanation could they have offered their users? Like with anyone caught cheating, the predictable response is "Really, this isn't what it looks like!".

"Twitter" sure, but if they discourage tweet, it's a new thing. You used to be encouraged to use tweet in your app name instead of twitter. Remember, they didn't officially call them "tweets" until recently(ish). You can even register twitter names with "tweet" in them, not "twitter."

From Twitter's Help Center [1]:

  You may:
  * Name your website, product, or application with something unique. Uses of Tw-, and Twit- are generally okay with us.
  * Feel free to include language on your site explaining that your application is built on the Twitter platform so people understand your product.
  * Use Tweet in the name of your application only if it is designed to be used exclusively with the Twitter platform.
  
  You may not:
  * Use Twitter in the name of your website or application.
  * Use just "Tweet" or "Tweet" with a simple letter or number combination (for example, 1Tweet, Tweet, Tweets).
  * Register a domain containing twitter (or misspellings of twitter).
  * Apply for a trademark with a name including Twitter or Tweet (or similar variations thereof).
  * Use Tweet in the name of your application if used with any other platform.

So the use of 'tweet' in an app name is allowed, if the app is a pure twitter client (not an app that integrates multiple social networks). You also have to agree not to trademark the name, if that name contains the word 'tweet'.

[1] http://support.twitter.com/articles/77641

As far as I know Twitter only discourages the use of Tweet in application names if you integrate with no applications other then Twitter like Facebook, Buzz, Foursqure, etc.

2010 was the year to invest in platforms. 2011 is the year to invest elsewhere. So long Facebook, Twitter, Apple - I no longer trust your platforms enough to put any significant resources into development.

It's time to end the walled garden resurgence and the best way to do that is on the ground floor.

More like 2011 is a year of over-generalizations. Good luck trying to find anything you can trust anyway.

I didn't mean it to be a broad generalization. Each platform has it's own problems, this is just the latest in another reminder that each of these can shut your business down with the flick of a switch or if they catch wind of competition they don't feel is right for their particular walled garden.

I trust myself to deliver products my customers want and find useful. That's enough for me.

With all these platforms (iphone/facebook/twitter),I think the smartest guys are those who do not get much news coverage, make decent money silently without growing too big, and not being too small. When you exist because of benevolent dictator,don't think of pointing a 0.44 magnum and getting lucky if you are just going to get nuked!!!

"I think the smartest guys are those who do not get much news coverage, make decent money silently without growing too big, and not being too small"

no spread news about the site, lots of money, small userbase --- is this even possible??? if yes, please give an example of a working site.

I don't know about the year-by-year breakdown, but that's exactly how I feel currently.

The platforms I've built for are each in the process of betraying their developers. I've done well with them so far but it's absolutely time to build independent businesses.

Independent of what? Platforms, technology, customers? Don't kid yourself, there's always somebody who's your "boss".

Independent of a platform which can shut you down just because you are a competitor.

It's amazing that people seem surprised that such a path is even an option.

I suppose you could argue that Level3, the big DNS servers, or InterNIC, or even DHS can shut you down too, but that seems awfully different then Twitter shutting down twitter app competitors, Apple threatening to pull content (competing) apps if they don't get their 30%, and Facebook potentially forcing apps to use their credit system or go home.

I'm really hoping people realize that this walled garden approach is hurting them in the end, and as these platforms move the goal posts more and more for what is acceptable, you might find you have wasted a few years of your life chasing a ghost.

It's up to you which path you choose, but for me, today, I'm making the decision to abandon these platforms and go my own way.

If you have a business based on say, using Twitter's API, you are wholly dependent upon them.

They could cut off your access, destroying you overnight. They could become less popular themselves, decreasing the value of your business in a way you have no control over.

That's not at all like being dependent upon a host, a linux distribution, your customers, or yourself. In a business based on some corporations external API you have all the usual dependencies plus your source, a single point of failure who is in a position of power over you.

I'm not sure this generalization applies to the same degrees to Apple, Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter especially has a hard platform to monetize to begin with - tweets are about all it has and so can't let someone hijack them even a little bit.

Twitter seems like the best "citizen of the open Internet" here. Distantly followed by Facebook, then with Apple being a foe openness as far as I can see.

I just tried twidroyd, and my feed for the last three hours only contains these two tweets:

Support: UberTwitter, twidroyd, and UberCurrent have been suspended due to policy violations. Read more here: http://t.co/HHGa9k1

Support: Want to keep using Twitter on your phone? Download an official Twitter client here: http://t.co/rxwSYuW

Wait, so Twitter support did that? I guess they can but it seems slightly sleezy.

On the contrary, how would most people know if it weren't for those tweets? Granted, we were also emailed, but this seems like good sense.

You got an email? from Twitter or UberMedia? I haven't received anything from either party except these tweets.

Edit: On second thought, I don't know what sort of personal communication standard I can hold UberMedia to. I don't think you actually need to register with them to use the client so they might not know who their users are to contact them. Well, apart from the 2.5 million twitter followers their account has.

Yep, I just got an email from Twitter a few minutes ago. The text was the one that's in the article.

I don't know the details on whether UberMedia asked for your email, but Twitter can email any Twitter account that has authorized UberTwitter regardless.

Yes. Apparently if you keep trying to make api calls with a banned app they keep feeding you these tweets.

Why does that seem sleazy?

Promoting your own app to all users of a rival client you've just suspended raises a few (quite possibly unwarranted) suspicions about their motivations. If they wanted to avoid that they could have mocked up something akin to the "Browser Choice" Microsoft got pushed into offering.

They're offering users who probably just want to use Twitter easy/quick access to an alternative client so they can get back to tweeting. Given that the app they used to use was banned for privacy violations, the fact that it's the official app is probably a good thing in terms of trust.

If that is the case, then why not direct them to Twitter.com?

Because, if I wanted to use twitter.com, I wouldn't be using an app.

Oh, I took the parent to mean that injecting messages into the stream of the suspended apps is sleazy.

Incredibly sleazy, especially since these clients are soon to be fixed and probably brought back into the API.

I'm all for enforcing a license, but I don't think that last line was necessary.

From Bill Gross, founder of UberMedia:

"Twitter has requested that we make some small changes to our clients, which we are doing right now, & we will be back live again asap."

http://twitter.com/Bill_Gross/status/38692931690954752

Small changes that they apparently didn't want to make, if it took them ten months to get started. I guess getting cut off is quite motivating.

According to Twitter, UberMedia infused twitter streams in their apps with ads. Turning off that 'feature' is probably trivial, but if that's UberMedia's business model, I can understand why they're hesitant to do so.

> According to Twitter, UberMedia infused twitter streams in their apps with ads.

But what problem should twitter be having ? If public dislike the ads they won't use it probably. If they are doing so, they are probably OK with it. There are lots of ads-free client out there.

They want to be the sole infuser of ads into Twitter streams.

Twitter has a right to protect the quality of their stream.

With 140 characters, there's no room signature spam.

Twitter's policy that you can't alter the user's tweeters is one of the first thing a developer sees in the terms of use.

The problem, I believe, is that they don't want users to be confused about where ads are coming from. Ads embedded in update streams may seem to be coming from twitter. Many other twitter clients have ads, they just make sure they can't be mistaken for ads embedded in updates.

I have a feeling that these changes were requested many times and a long time ago...

Bill Gross on the alleged violations:

Trademark infringement: "UberTwitter will change its name to UberSocial."

Privacy issues: "The privacy issues are related to handling Tweets longer than 140 characters." This information, combined with "privacy issue with private Direct Messages longer than 140 characters" (from Twitter) makes me think that DMs and protected Tweets greater than 140 characters were passed to a site like TwitLonger, which makes the full text accessible by a URL. That site then showed the message to anybody who had the URL without any account authentication.

Monetization: Twitter believed UberMedia used affiliate links, which Gross disputes.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/18/ubermedia-bill-gross-twitte...

So part of the problem is a complaint of trademark dilution? How about this name for a twitter client:

Birdfeed.

R.I.P. Birdfeed (http://birdfeedapp.com).

Anybody know what "changing the content of users’ Tweets in order to make money" actually means in this case?

Were they inserting affiliate IDs into Amazon links or something?

Second. I use twitdroyd (mostly for reading tweets), but I'd be pretty pissed if they actively modify my tweets. I wish the article would be more specific that.

I got an android phone recently and started using twidroyd yesterday. The first time I tried to tweet from my phone, when I hit 'done' a 30-char-or-so ad for Twidroyd was appended onto my (20-char-or-so) tweet. I was rather irked that I had to go back into the text edit box to delete it. I uninstalled the app immediately (thanks VM for not locking down the base ROM to prevent removing this default app, I guess) so I don't know whether this is only first-use behavior or persistent, but it is rather sleazy and annoying and I don't blame Twitter for banning them for this sort of horsecrap in the slightest.

This is uncool. So I have an Android 1.6 phone. I use Twidroyd and the named alternative, the official Twitter app is for devices on Android 2.1 or later. I also have no plans to change my phone for at least another year. Maybe that's just me, but I doubt it.

What about Plume/Touiteur?

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.levelup.touiteur&#...

There's an abundance of Twitter clients for Android, or you can use the mobile web version. I use TweetDeck.

Twicca doesn't support 1.6?

Here's a link to the official Twitter statement: http://support.twitter.com/articles/452648-i-m-having-proble...

No clue to whether this is a permanent suspension - or what? I suspect it is since they marketed their apps at the end.

Word on the street is that those clients may have been doing some sketchy things ("changing tweets to monetize... privacy issues with DMs"):

http://twitter.com/#!/marshallk/status/38679317034565632

This is curiously close to the release date of their latest twitter app.

Because it's not like they haven't had an official client on that platform for many months now...

Would imagine that one of (possibly the only?) violation for UberTwitter is the trademark violation. They had already been forced to use @UberTwiter (without the double 't') for this reason.

Sucks from a user's point of view, UberTwitter is by far the best client for Blackberry, SO much better than Twitter's frankly terrible official app.

I'm pretty sure that, if UberTwitter is a violation, so is UberTwiter. The standard isn't "is spelled the same"; it's "is likely to confuse the customer".

This is a really crappy way for Twitter to have handled this as far as their users are concerned. Somebody over at reddit posted a screencap of an email that Twitter's apparently sending out to users of these apps, and it largely screamed of FUD to me:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/fo203/twidroyd_susp...

There are also indications that it's not just UberTwitter and Twidroyd, but all of UberMedia's apps that have been blocked. Almost makes me think that the FUD aspect may have been intended.

EDIT:

Looks like at least some of their properties, like EchoFon have survived.

I still don't like Twitter hanging end users out to dry like this, though.

If Twitter bans modifying tweets for monetization and told the company to stop, or if the company actually was playing fast and loose with privacy issues, then it seems to me it's not Twitter who left anyone hanging out to dry.

A. It's still not clear exactly what the issues were. Having use the app, I can't think of where Twidroyd steps on those toes. (I suspect that in its case Twitter is throwing a fit about trademark).

B. Suddenly cutting off two apps that are among the most popular on their platforms without prior warning is crappy for users. Publicly issue a drop dead date to fix the problems to the developers, and give your users a chance to be ready for things first.

I'm not arguing that it isn't crappy for users. I'm saying, if the vendor was warned about this and played games about it instead, they're the ones who did something crappy to the users.

I'm saying that there's blame to go around. If there's some sort of major privacy issue that has a direct negative impact on users, sure, I can see cutting it off.

Barring that, killing apps that are as popular as UberTwitter and Twidroyd with no prior public warning simply isn't the best way Twitter could have handled this.

This is why you shouldn't rely so heavily on third-party services for your business. Twitter can either change policies to make it so you can no longer make money or just out-right compete with you and put you out of business.

This is what you have to deal with as a developer on the Twitter platform. Their policies have become so bloated and far-reaching that most apps are in violation.

why does the TechCrunch story get upvoted more than the original source?

To be fair, the TechCrunch story has more information than Twitter itself provided in their initial statement (with regards to the 'why' of the suspensions).

That said, I submitted the source page but it failed to reach the front page for some reason:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2236675

Because, contrary to the posturing that happens on the site, people still prefer to read a gossip rag instead of actually see what's happened?

Traffic

Anyone else notice that #Twittermobile is a promoted trend? Twitter are really pushing their own app today.

Misleading subject line on the email from Twitter about this: "Important information about your Twitter application" (emphasis mine).

Turns out it wasn't about my application at all, it was twidroyd. Way to get my attention though.

Affected by this and so annoyed, I'm about to delete my twitter account, so I wanted to backup my tweets, and found http://pongsocket.com/tweetnest/ which seems to do the job nicely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com