Looks like Bill Gross’ UberMedia has had its API access reinstated for at least two of its apps this Sunday afternoon, after a dramatic turn of events led to them being shut down on Friday under the auspices of privacy, monetization and trademark violations.
In the their return, Blackberry client UberTwitter will be changing its name to UberSocial and Android app twidroyd will be making no name changes — Both have complied with Twitter’s requests to remedy the offending violations.
From Twitter Support:
“We’ve given the developers of twidroyd and UberSocial for Blackberry (formerly UberTwitter) access to the Twitter API again. Our initial review indicates that steps have been taken to remedy the violations for these applications.
When the developer updates twidroyd and Ubersocial, you’ll be able to download their updates to access Tweets again on these applications.”
No word yet on whether the apps are actually functioning as it’s now up to UberMedia developers to provide updates, and users will have to download the new versions of the apps in order to see tweets. The iPhone apps UberCurrent and UberSocial (formerly UberTwitter) have not yet been sent to Twitter for review.
http://twitter.com/#!/PerezHilton/status/39119668530786304
Twitter has given us the following statement:
“Today Twitter reinstated access to the applications twidroyd and UberSocial for Blackberry (formerly UberTwitter), which were suspended two days ago for policy violations. Our initial review indicates that steps have been taken to remedy the violations for these applications. We will review these applications on an ongoing basis for compliance.
We will review UberSocial for iPhone and UberCurrent, two other applications suspended on Friday, when they are provided to us.
Developers using the Twitter API have a responsibility not to violate the rules designed to protect our users and the long-term health and vitality of the Twitter platform. If you use the API that we support at great cost with our infrastructure and engineers, you sign up to abide by the rules for its use. While we don’t pre-review every application the way, say, Apple does in its App Store, that is no excuse to violate the rules or see what you can get away with.
Hundreds of thousands of developers who use our API daily do so within the framework we set up, without the need for close oversight, threats or actions that impact users.
We closely evaluate our relationships with developers that don’t work within this framework.”
Update: Bill Gross tells me via DM that the app updates should be available very soon, “We are recompiling and testing and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready.” Stay tuned!
Update 2: Twidroyd’s ready! You can find it here http://bit.ly/Twidroyd5DL UberSocial is also now available at http://bit.ly/UberDL.