Twitter reinstates banned UberMedia apps

Twitter engaged in a little show of strength over the weekend, first suspending UberTwitter, Twidroid and UberCurrent – and then reinstating them.

The company withdrew API access for the three apps, produced by UberMedia, on Friday. Without giving details, the company said that they violated its policies.

While this sort of suspension isn’t that rare an event, the company said it was taking the unusual step of warning its customers because of the popularity of the apps – they’ve been estimated to handle as many as one fifth of all tweets around the world.

Twitter’s believed to have been concerned about privacy issues, changes made to the contents of tweets, and the name UberTwitter, which it sees as infringing its copyright.

But today, all seems well. UberSocial has renamed its Blackberry and iOS Twitter client UberTwitter ‘UberSocial’ – something it says it was considering doing anyway. “We began a process of changing the name three weeks ago by polling our users,” it says.

UberSocial describes the changes requested by Twitter as ‘very small’, and says it’s already in the process of posting revised versions of the apps to their respective stores.

“We’ve given the developers of twidroyd and UberSocial for Blackberry (formerly UberTwitter) access to the Twitter API again. Our initial review indicates that steps have been taken to remedy the violations for these applications,” says a statement on Twitter’s Help Center page.

UberTwitter was back late last night – and instantly overwhelmed by eager users. “Wow! Overwhelmed by your loyalty!,” said UberMedia in a tweet. “Servers slammed; adding more.”