Wednesday, February 23, 2011

UberFailure

On Friday February 18th, the worst thing in the world happened to Blackberry (and Android) users everywhere: UberTwitter shut down. For the millions of people that use this application daily, the sudden shutdown came as a surprise. 




As I sat in the library Friday morning finishing a paper, I went to tweet about how aggravated I was about the paper. Since Twitter is my "complaining" forum, this was a pretty regular task. Suddenly a foreign message popped up on my phone saying "FORBIDDEN." Naturally, I tried to send the tweet again. FORBIDDEN - again. Was this a joke? At first I blamed my Blackberry. It's not that I don't like my Blackberry, it just never likes to work when I need it to. After trying to send in the tweet 93029341 times I gave up and just went online. As soon as I signed on my Twitter, I noticed a bunch of tweets saying things like "RIP UBERTWITTER" and "UberTwitter has shut down." I was floored. Surely, this was causing a major inconvenience to people all over the world. For those of us that live and breath social media, this was the worst news ever. Sure there are other applications, but none were as efficient as UberTwitter (in my opinion). 




UberTwitter was unexpectedly suspended  from using Twitter’s API for multiple violations. According to sources, "These violations include, but aren’t limited to, a privacy issue with private direct messages longer than 140 characters, trademark infringement, and changing the content of users’ tweets in order to make money." News of the sudden shut down spread everywhere. Reports were posted on many major news sources such as: The Washington Post, The LA Times, and Mashable. Later on Friday, UberTwitter tweeted: 







In accordance with Twitter's policies, UberTwitter changed its name to UberSocial. As of Saturday, the new application was up and running. In my opinion, the new app is even better than the old one. It is easier to use, with many more options for users. While February 18th is a day no Twitter fanatic will forget, the outcome definitely outweighed the momentary tragedy. 



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