After targeting Google last week, the Federal Trade Commission has now begun investigating real-time short messaging service Twitter’s business practices, Business Insider reported on Thursday.
At this point in time, the details of the investigations are sketchy but it seems that a case is being made for the way Twitter deals with the companies building applications and services for its platform.
(Image credit : Webpronews.com)
Additionally, Business Insider reports that ” Twitter will soon create a site to ‘offer up as much information as possible to developers and partners.’
BI assumes that the two pieces of news are related, and it’s hard to argue at this point. It’s not that it looks suspicious on Twitter’s part, but maybe it’s better to be proactive in this regard than wait for a lawsuit, fine or whatever the FTC might slap down.
Zdnet comments, ” At this point, it’s unclear as to why the FTC would be looking behind the scenes at Twitter. One of the more likely explanations would probably have something to do with the fact that Twitter has been cracking down on support for third-party client apps for its platform. Twitter has made it known publicly that it wants these third-party apps gone. (Maybe San Francisco-based company said it more politely, but that’s the gist.)
One way Twitter has gone about this publicly is buying these clients out, such as Tweetie last year and TweetDeck this year. However, now there is speculation that Twitter might be acting more aggressively than we thought. That’s possibly where and why the FTC has stepped in.
Puzzling over the FTC’s move Techland Time posted, “Given that Twitter is in competition with Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and a number of other social networking services, including the recently announced Google+, one has to wonder why the FTC is targeting the network which is used by less than ten percent of Americans.”
Speculating behind the reason for the investigation Techland Time said, “It may be the influence of Columbia University Law School professor Tim Wu, an ardent supporter of Internet regulation who is best known for coining the term ‘net neutrality’. Wu joined the FTC in February as Senior Adviser.”
In November, 2010, Wu published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled In the Grip of the New Monopolists in which he listed Facebook, Amazon, Skype,Twitter, Apple, eBay and Google as potential monopolists.
In this article he laments what he sees as lax enforcement of the Sherman Act and said that unfortunately “today we don’t have the heart to euthanise a healthy firm like Facebook just because it’s huge and happens to know more about us than the IRS.”
Today’s announcement makes Twitter the third company on Wu’s list of “monopolists” to face an investigation since he joined the FTC. An investigation of Apple was announced earlier this year, and Google disclosed it was being investigated last week.
It may be noted here that in March Twitter settled with FTC over allegations of privacy violations.