FTC sniffs around Twitter

The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly been talking to both Twitter and a company called UberMedia about possible anticompetitive issues. UberMedia uses the Twitter API (application programming interface) to build applications to read and send tweets. Twitter had historically taken a very open approach to app developers building on the Twitter platform because it was an easy way to get global reach. But in recent months, Twitter has begun restricting access to its data, preferring to drive people to its own site to stay up on Twitter or its own branded phone and tablet apps. Twitter recently acquired one of the biggest Twitter client app developers, a company called TweetDeck.

And a new report from the company says Twitter logs 200 million tweets per day. That number is way up from last year (65 million). It also reported the top trending topics in the first half of 2011. Wouldn’t have guessed “AH1N1 Swine Flu” would be #1 in the World Events/News category.