Twitter's laying down the bird-law this morning, and the owners of Twidroyd, UberMedia, don't have much in the way of good news to tweet about right now (I am so sorry for that entire sentence).

Twitter has suspended access to its social network from Twidroyd, UberTwitter, and UberCurrent - three apps owned by UberMedia. Why? Gizmodo claims it's for the following reasons:

UberMedia "violated Twitter policies and trademarks in a variety of ways." Like "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."

I don't use Twidroyd, so I have no idea what any of this is all about aside from the trademark infringement issue. UberMedia's UberTwitter client clearly violates the trademark on the Twitter name, but apparently the infringement could extend down to use of the word "tweet." It's easy to see why Twitter might be upset about this, as a company rapidly having to figure out a way to monetize its hugely popular service, there's a need to rein in 3rd party software that is trying to do the same.

Interestingly, UberMedia is currently in the process of acquiring the well-know social feed client TweetDeck - a name change may be in order there as well, if Twitter has its way.

Since it's based entirely on the feed model, Twitter itself doesn't offer a lot more functionality than any feed client that can access your Twitter account, and this probably makes investors wary of the possibility that Twitter could lose control of how its service is used unless it starts pulling strings right now. Given the explosive smartphone market and Twitter's natural affinity for use thereon, the mobile space is probably the best place to start.

However, this doesn't make Twitter's decision a good one - you can bet your blue canaries that every 3rd party developer working on an app integrating a Twitter feed just collectively clenched their anuses in fear. Seesmic seems pretty optimistic, though.

BusinessInsider, Gizmodo