R.I.P UberTwitter

Pasti Anda bingung kenapa UberTwitter (UT) tidak lagi berkicau sejak pagi. Ini bukan karena ada kesalahan teknis atau server UT dihack sama orang yang tidak bertanggung-jawab. Melainkan karena memang 'kesalahan' yang dibuat oleh UberMedia, selaku pengembang aplikasi UT, yang melanggar hak paten.

Tidak hanya UberTwitter, masih ada beberapa platform keluaran UberMedia yang mengalami nasib serupa, seperti UberCurrent, dan Twitdroid. Seperti yang dikutip oleh GADGET dari situs techcrunch.com, juru bicara Twitter, Carolyn Penner, mengungkapkan alasannya :

We ask all developers in Twitter ecosystem to abide by a simple set of rules that are in the interests of our users, as well as the health and vitality of the platform as a whole.

We often take actions to enforce these rules; in fact, on an average day we turn off more than one hundred services that violate our API rules of the road. This keeps the ecosystem fair for everyone.

Today we suspended several applications, including UberTwitter, twidroyd and UberCurrent, which 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.

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.

Di samping itu, muncul berbagai spekulasi terhadap diblokirnya aplikasi UT, TwitDroid, dan UberCurrent. Situs businessinsider.com mengungkapkan, ada beberapa alasan yang menyebabkan Twitter geram terhadap ketiga platform tersebut:

• Suspicion in some quarters that Gross is roping all these Twitter apps together to build a network between them that would rival Twitter's.
• Some say the issue is the Facebook influence over UberMedia bothers Twitter. Accel partner Jim Breyer, who sits on Facebook's board, will now also take a seat on UberMedia's board.
• One source says Twitter hates the idea of letting another company control its UX/UI, and doesn't think it needs to be shown how to make money.
• It's possible Twitter worries that Google or Facebook will see buying UberMedia and using it as a toe-hold to launch a Twitter clone as a cheaper alternative to spending $10 billion to buy Twitter. One source close to TweetDeck hints: "Uber-oogle?"
  

'Kematian' UT turut disesali oleh semua pengguna BlackBerry. Ada berbagai alasan yang membuat para pengguna BlackBerry merasa kehilangan, mulai dari tampilan antar-mukanya yang catchy, beragam fitur yang menarik, hingga mudahnya menggunakan aplikasi UT bila dibandingkan dengan aplikasi Twitter for BlackBerry. Sorry to say, tapi memang UT memiliki kelebihan yang jauh lebih baik bila dibandingkan aplikasi resmi Twitter untuk BlackBerry. Apakah Twitter mampu mengobati rasa kecewa para pengguna UberTwitter, TwitDroid, dan UberCurrent?! Kita tunggu saja.

sumber;http://megindo.net/news/Gadget/rip-ubertwitter/2fa2f1839a82bb2940639b9e92b82e73/#