Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said Twitter is dropping a bomb on UberMedia with these allegations.

"Users are highly sensitive to privacy violations and companies trying to make money off of their personal info," he added. "Twitter hitting UberMedia with that puts a damned big dent in UberMedia's reputation. The charge that UberMedia is actually changing customer tweets to make money is particularly damaging -- if it's true."

When the news hit Friday afternoon, users quickly took to Twitter to vent their frustrations. And much of that frustration was aimed at Twitter itself.

TimBledsoe tweeted, "I feel a great disturbance ... as if millions of voices cried out and were suddenly silenced. #ubertwitter #twidroyd #failwhale @twitter."

To exacerbate the situation, Twitter was promoting its own TwitterMobile, an application for using the microblogging site on mobile devices, under its top trends on the site's home page.