Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Ashton Kutcher Has a Twitter App. Why?

Actor and social media guru Ashton Kutcher is launching a custom Twitter client built with UberMedia. A.Plus, which seems to be aimed at people who primarily use Twitter to follow Kutcher, is an Adobe Air desktop client featuring content channels curated by Kutcher as well as a built-in browser to view content linked in tweets.

Kutcher (@aplusk) is one of the most popular Twitter users, with 6.8 million followers. UberMedia, meanwhile, is Bill Gross’ Twitter ecosystem company that has a bad relationship with Twitter.

Earlier this year, Twitter suspended access to various UberMedia Twitter apps for a few days, citing repeated terms of service violations. That conflict is part of why Twitter declared that third-party developers should stop making Twitter clients. (Did Ashton not get that memo?)

Twitter clients are often used by active tweeters who want a more customizable and powerful version of the service that’s accessible from various devices. UberMedia spent the last year buying up Twitter apps for mobile and desktop platforms such as UberSocial, Twidroyd and Echofon, and it recently tried to buy TweetDeck, the ultimate power-user app.

Now Twitter is expected to close the TweetDeck deal instead, as soon as this week.

So why is Kutcher, aka Mr. Twitter, working with UberMedia? Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but you have to wonder if Twitter slighted Kutcher by not thanking him enough for his endless promotion of their service.

Also, it’s probably safe to say that Kutcher–who just scored a gig to replace Charlie Sheen’s role in “Two and a Half Men”–reaches a more mainstream audience than most Twitter clients.

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I’m a giant vat of creative juices.

— David Pogue on why he’s joining Yahoo