The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has begun contacting software makers as part of a preliminary inquiry into whether the business practices of Twitter Inc harm competition, two people familiar with the matter said.
The agency is responding to complaints that Twitter is making it harder for some software developers to design applications that run in concert with the company’s service, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter has not been made public.
The agency has been taking a more active role in examining the behavior of large Internet companies in recent months. Last week, Google Inc, the world’s biggest Internet-search provider, said it had received a subpoena from the commission regarding a broad antitrust probe into its dominance.
Commission spokesperson Peter Kaplan declined to comment, as did Sean Garrett, a spokesman for San Francisco-based Twitter.
Twitter, which allows people to communicate in 140-character messages, has seen its usage surge since the company was founded four years ago. The Web site is now used by 13 percent of US adults online, up from 8 percent in November last year, as more older Americans embrace the service, according to a report last month by the Pew Research Center in Washington.
Twitter, competing with social-networking service Facebook Inc, is trying to improve its products and attract more users and advertisers. Last year, the company added more features that matched what independent Twitter developers were already doing, such as applications for smartphones.
One developer, UberMedia, said in an e-mailed statement on Thursday: “We have been contacted by the FTC and we intend to fully comply with their request for information.”
The California-based company did not say that the probe was targeting Twitter.
On its Web site, UberMedia -describes itself as the leading independent developer of applications that help users find and communicate with one another on Twitter.
Business Insider reported on the FTC inquiry earlier on Thursday.
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