UberMedia’s semi-direct Twitter competitor: Chime.in, which gets released tomorrow, has two things that Twitter and Facebook don’t have: Easily modifiable profiles, and the ability to SELL ADS on your site. In other words, UberMedia’s saying screw it, we’re going to give you the ability to make money off the stuff you curate right off the bat. Plus, smartly, the company’s already gathered partners on the site. What do you all think? Would you use this? Will this help UberMedia wean off the whole dependence on Twitter?
“Recently, Twitter’s Ryan Sarver advised developers not to create Twitter clients that reproduce “the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience,” so it’s natural to think that Twitter is simply trying to consolidate its fragmented ecosystem by acquiring TweetDeck. However, this acquisition is more likely a defensive move by the microblogging platform to keep TweetDeck out of UberMedia’s hands. Twitter simply doesn’t want one company controlling more than 20% of the ecosystem; that acquisition would give UberMedia way too much leverage and influence over Twitter’s platform. That’s why Twitter is willing to dish out $20 million more than UberMedia’s initial offer to TweetDeck.”—
While I don’t agree with Twitter’s stance on apps — it seems too disruptive — UberMedia is crazy to make such a huge power play like that. And I say that as someone who quite enjoys one of their desktop apps, EchoFon. It’s just greedy and gives them the kind of leverage Twitter should have instead. Twitter’s instincts were right here.
But wait … wait. Wasn’t that UberMedia company buying TweetDeck? What’s going on here? This is like a major shake-up. (via breakingnews)
We’ve had conversations with UberMedia, the developer of these applications, about policy violations since April 2010, when they first launched under the name TweetUp – a term commonly used by Twitter users and a trademark violation. We continue to be in contact with UberMedia and hope that they will bring the suspended applications into compliance with our policies soon.A message from Twitter • Revealing that they had temporarily banned some of the most popular third-party apps on their system – Twidroid, UberTwitter and UberCurrent – for their unauthorized usage of Twitter copyright in their apps. UberMedia, which owns all three of these apps, has quickly become the most-powerful third-party developer in the Twitter ecosystem, and recently bought the also-offending Tweetdeck (which hasn’t been shut down). While UberMedia is working hard to fix the problems, the real question is why Twitter had to do this in the first place. These apps helped make Twitter popular. Now that Twitter is huge, all of a sudden they’re going to be the heavies? Not sure how we feel about this, honestly. source (via • follow)
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