Twitter said it has reinstated two of several UberMedia apps that it had shut down on Friday because of alleged privacy, monetization and trademark violations.
The incident shows that platform owners have to be diligent about protecting their users from apps that may cause them harm, intentionally or not. And it shows that app makers have to respond very fast when they are hit with platform bans.
UberMedia, headed by investor Bill Gross, had its access to Twitter’s applications programming interface (API) yanked on Friday. To get Twitter to reinstate its services, the company had to change the name of its UberTwitter BlackBerry client to UberSocial. And the company’s Twidroyd service has now complied with Twitter’s requests to remedy the violations.
Twitter support said, “We’ve given the developers of twidroyd and UberSocial for Blackberry (formerly UberTwitter) access to the Twitter API again. Our initial review indicates that steps have been taken to remedy the violations for these applications.”
UberMedia’s iPhone apps UberCurrent and UberSocial have not yet been sent to Twitter for review and so those apps are still unavailable.
