Ovum (News - Alert), a research firm that focuses upon convergence across telecoms, IT services and software, and by researching what is happening in the market, analyzes the changes and identify the threats and opportunities ahead for its clients, has mentioned in its new report that the relationship of Twitter, a social networking site, with its developers is becoming increasingly strained as the site is going to roll out its own mobile applications. In the report titled 'Twitter grows up and gets serious', the research firm has emphasized that Twitter should urgently provide developers with a clear roadmap of its future plans related to the in-house development efforts of the company, so that harmony can be established between the developers and the company.

In April this year, Twitter introduced an in-house application for BlackBerry (News - Alert) smartphones, and the application has grabbed around 7-8 percent of new signups after its launch. In the same month, the company acquired AteBits, a company that develops Tweetie iPhone (News - Alert) application, and has been planning to rename the Tweetie application as "Twitter for iPhone," with an aim to position the application as the 'official' Twitter iPhone app. Before the acquisition, the application was available for $2.99, but Twitter is going to give it away to the users for free, which threatens to undercut developers that might want to charge for similar iPhone apps. The company has also been planning to develop its own Twitter application for Android (News - Alert) devices.

In the words of Eden Zoller, the Principal analyst at Ovum who has authored the report, as Twitter matures, it is inevitable that the company will want to produce or acquire more in-house applications, and there is always a certain inherent tension between developers and platform owners. Zoller continued that however, Twitter needs to be very careful not to alienate the developer community as they drive innovation for the service and also traffic, and it should be remembered that applications account for 75 percent of all tweets.

Recently Twitter announced there were 100,000 applications for the site, while in December last year just half of them were available to the users. The company declared to the developers that it aims at concentrating on services that enhance the platform's "core experience", at its inaugural developer conference known as Chirp.

Zoller noted that developers do not want to go to the trouble and cost of building an app if Twitter itself is going to make a big play for same area, and this is exactly what Twitter appears to be doing with its in-house applications for smartphones, and the Tweetie application it acquired in April stands out as a case in point.

In March 2010, Barracuda Networks (News - Alert) released a new report that focused on Twitter trends and tracking, Web threats and trends and e-mail spam and viruses.