The astounding pace of Twitter’s growth – the microblogging site currently boasts around 50 million Twitter posts per day, as against the early-2009 figures of 2.5 million and 2007 figures of a mere 5,000 – can largely be credited to the contribution of third-party developers who have built nearly 70,000 apps for making the Twitter service increasingly functional.

With Twitter facilitating the app development process for the programmers, the various Twitter apps allow users a host of benefits, including – the capability of posting a picture; shortening URL; prompt monitoring of a number of Twitter accounts; using the service easily from a cellphone; and searching for people to follow.

Twitter and the developers have thus far bonded in such a manner that the developers never charged Twitter for their apps because the company helped them generate revenue from advertisers, as well as Twitter users who were willing to pay for apps.

However, the relationship between Twitter and the third-party developers has apparently become tense of late, with Twitter having grown big enough to buy or build its own version of some of the outside apps; a move that is evident from Twitter’s acquisitions - of Summize in 2008, and Atebits last week.

No wonder developers are apprehensive that in case Twitter’s engineers build native features similar to their apps, Twitter would become an arch rival to their start-ups, rather than remaining a generous benefactor!