The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Twitter over their treatment of third parties that build applications onto their platform. Business Insider suggests that the investigation is related to an incident involving entrepreneur Bill Gross and his company, UberMedia. Gross, who invented search advertising, has been buying various Twitter startups in an apparent move to create an ad-network within that ecosystem. Twitter itself had been making similar moves in the past year, buying clients like Tweetie and TweetDeck, adding image capabilities to Twitter.com and banning third-party advertisers in order to build their own network. Business Insider reports about the potential conflict:
Eventually, [UberMedia] got funding from Accel with the idea that the money would be used to buy TweetDeck. It sort of looked like Gross might be planning to launch a Twitter competitor–or at least string his Twitter clients into their own monetized network. But then Twitter got aggressive with Gross – first by shutting down several of its apps for a week or so, and then by stepping in and acquiring TweetDeck for itself.
Business Insider notes that neither the FTC nor Twitter replied for comment, though another Twitter app maker said, “Our lawyer has advised us not to talk about this particular topic.
