As UberMedia learned very publicly today, software developers must carefully abide by terms-of-service (TOS) agreements when using APIs. As you may already know, Twitter has a powerful API that enables developers to create programs that access information from Twitter. This open API has been used by companies such as HootSuite and UberMedia to create powerful Twitter clients.
However, in a shocking move today, Twitter removed UberMedia’s rights to use their API because UberMedia was not abiding by Twitter’s terms of service. Rumor has it that Twitter had three primary complaints:
- UberMedia’s Twitter client, UberTwitter, was infringing on Twitter’s trademark.
- UberMedia was enabling users to tweet more than 140 characters.
- UberMedia was accused of monetizing tweets
