Twitter has been having a rather distinctive attitude towards app developers lately, having even banned 3 UberMedia-owned mobile apps from using its APIs. The main reason for doing so is the apps being out of line with the [updated] terms and conditions stipulated by Twitter, namely privacy issues (…), trademark infringement, and changing the content of users’ Tweets in order to make money’ says Twitter. The company asked developers not to build any more clients, mentioning that third-party clients, such as Seesmic, can continue to operate under strict standards of privacy and consistent user experience.

For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn’t follow our design guidelines,” says Sarver, “or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter…Users should be able to view, retweet, and reply to @nytimes’ tweets the same way; see the same profile information about @whitehouse; and be able to join in the discussion around the same trending topics as everyone else across Twitter.

We need to ensure that tweets and tweet actions are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter what they are, says Twitter’s director of platform Ryan Sarver.

Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.

This is what happens when a powerful company greatly developed with the help of third party developers, now trying to regain control over developers and when there is no congruence between the business goals of the partners. The wisest move for Twitter would now be to take care of its developer community as they cannot exist without their app ecosystem, even as they strive towards monetization.