UberMedia, a third party Twitter app developer (Echofon, UberSocial), was recently suspended by Twitter for alleged policy violations. Well UberMedia has had enough of Twitter’s bullying.
Twitter execs have said they are trying to guide 3rd party developers to create apps that don’t duplicate functions of official Twitter apps, but since the official Twitter app basically covers everything Twitter is capable of doing, that doesn’t leave much room for 3rd party development. UberMedia, having had 3 of their apps blocked by Twitter in February, aren’t above going directly against Twitter in the Social Media ring.
“Our foremost desire is to continue to innovate on the Twitter platform and bring more users and usage to Twitter,” UberMedia marketing chief Steve Chadima said in a statement.
But, if all else fails, they’ve said they may resort to competing directly against Twitter by addressing common complaints from Twitter users like the 140 character length. Their plan is to use their clout with some of the Twitter power users to sway them to their platform and away from Twitter.
Personally, I don’t see it working. Twitter has amassed more than 200 million users and it would likely take more than removal of 140 character restriction to sway them to move elsewhere, but hey, stranger things have happened. Regardless, Twitter should consider playing nice with developers to keep their reign in the top tier of social networks safe from challengers.
Source: CNN
To me, it seems like a company trying to make a new Twitter reminds me a bit of some of these clueless people from Clients From Hell trying to make a new Facebook.
Sure, UberMedia certainly has an advantage over the aforementioned clueless clients by having a significant percentage of Twitter users using their apps, but convincing people to migrate from Twitter will still be a monumental task, even if UberMedia’s service is superior to that of Twitter.
Agreed. It’s a massive uphill battle and it’s more than likely going to fail… but if they innovate enough, they just might be able to pull it off.
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