Friend or Foe? Twitter vs. App Makers

Recently, the New York Times reported on the strained relationship between social media giant, Twitter and the third party makers of its applications. The relationship between parties is a delicate situation as Twitter continues to grow and acquire select applications such as TweetDeck, putting it in competition with other apps like TwitPic. Bottom line? App developers could be put out at any time if Twitter decides to create its own apps for measuring influence or checking into a location. With social media's continued success, the company's relatively bare bones platform leads many to wonder when will Twitter begin to develop its own applications. For now, the company assures app makers that won't happen but considering past examples from other technology leaders like Apple and Microsoft, something is bound to give.

How quickly remains to be seen. Competition on the social media front is fierce lately, as Google+ rises to challenge Twitter's microblogging concept and almost every other social networking site on the web, including Facebook's control over online profiles and Flickr's lock on photo sharing. As the marketplace floods with more competition and more users, Twitter's only logical move may be to trounce the application makers.