Twitter is going to make big changes in tweets containing links.In an announcement made on twitter blog, company mentioned that it will soon be using a new official link shortening service t.co to wrap all links shared on Twitter. Starting some time this summer, every time you share a link through either the Twitter web client or a third-party.
Twitter VP of Product Jason Goldman says that the feature serves three purposes. First, it’s going to help Twitter crack down on spam, as the service will be able to accurately monitor the distribution of each link, and it can warn users when it thinks a link may be malicious. Second, it will allow users to better understand where links are going (more on that below). And third, it will help Twitter with analytics, which is related to its Promoted Tweets. Goldman says that Twitter is pre-announcing the feature, which is currently only active with three accounts, to give the developer community a heads up for what’s coming.
This is not very good news for other link shorteners like bit.ly. Goldman says that bit.ly’s value-added services like analytics and custom shortened domains will still work perfectly with t.co, and users can obviously still use bit.ly for more general link shortening purposes. But as most people sharing links through services like bit.ly are doing it because to keep there tweet count under per tweet character limit (which is 140 characters) or it is done by there twitter clients automatically; they don’t need link analytics or custom domains. These users now need not to use other link shortener services, because Twitter will be handling the shortened links itself.
Goldman says that the “goal is not to build a brand around t.co”. Instead, it’s to increase the transparency of links that are being shared on Twitter.
The confusing part about t.co is that most users will not be aware of it. That’s because Twitter is including metadata with each tweet that allows clients to display the link’s original URL, even when the link is being routed through t.co first. For example, if I shared a link to http://www.yogendrasharma.com, the link in my tweet would still show up as http://www.yogendrasharma.com, despite the fact that users were being routed through t.co before they arrived at Techyogi blog. Users will now be seeing expanded links show up in their tweets (instead of shortened link) as each link will only be counted as twenty characters against the 140 character maximum. That’s because all t.co links will be exactly twenty characters long.
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