• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, July 1, 2011

As it turns out, Google might not be the only Web giant facing a government investigation. "The Federal Trade Commission is actively investigating Twitter and the way it deals with the companies building applications and services for its platform," reports Business Insider.

"The precise focus of the review isn't clear, but representatives of the FTC's antitrust arm have requested information from a company called UberMedia Inc., which owns applications that let people read and send ‘tweets,' or messages, broadcast by Twitter users," according to The Wall Street Journal.

The review is reportedly "narrow" in scope, and isn't likely to impact Twitter's advertising business, reports WSJ, citing a single source. Yet, "The federal review underscores the tensions between Twitter and some of the companies that make applications for users of the service," writes The Los Angeles Times.

Indeed, "As Twitter has built new features for the service -- such as a photo-sharing tool ... its relationship has grown strained with some of the third-party developers," Reuters writes. "In February, Twitter temporarily blocked several UberMedia applications from accessing Twitter data citing violations of its terms of service."

"Young and fast-growing companies thrive on attention, except when it's from the FTC," Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, tells Computerworld. "But when that young company controls a whole category of applications and has made some moves to deny others the chance to live in their ecosystem, it's bound to get some scrutiny sooner or later."

"If we look back at the case of UberSocial, the app was accused of not only violating trademark with its name, but also of mishandling how it sent direct messages that were over 140 characters in length," writes The Next Web. "Either we haven't yet heard the whole story, or the FTC is simply sticking its nose into an already-dead issue."

"Although the news doesn't necessarily mean Twitter is under official investigation, since the FTC often conducts informal inquiries that never proceed to the official stage, it means the company's behavior must have raised enough critical flags to catch the regulator's attention, which is rarely good," GigaOm writes.