Twitter Facing Antitrust Inquiry from FTC [REPORT]

Credit:

Why Twitter is under investigation is not yet clear, although the FTC's antitrust arm appears to be the one making the inquiries. Steve Chadima, chief marketing officer of Ubermedia, a company that owns and operates third-party Twitter clients including Echofon, has confirmed that it has been contacted by the FTC and intends to comply fully with its request for information.

A spokesperson for the FTC declined to comment.

Twitter has come head-to-head with developers of third-party Twitter applications lately, blocking some third-party services and acquiring others. The company's motive is simple: It doesn't want third parties making money -- namely, coming into direct competition by selling ads -- off its service, and thus depriving Twitter of potential revenue.

Nistan Hargil, director of research at GreenCrest Capital, a private equity firm that publishes research on late-stage private companies including Twitter, says it's unlikely that the investigation will result in anything but a warning to Twitter to behave more sensitively to developer partners in the future.

"We don't expect any official censure to ensue," Hargil wrote in an email to Mashable.

Last year, the FTC concluded its first known investigation of Twitter, which resulted in the alteration of several of its security practices.