I rarely use profanity on my blog, but what Twitter announced they are planning to do today is bullshit! Today they sent an email out to all subscribers with a couple of announcements. The first dealt with authenticating against the Twitter API. Fine, whatever. The second was a HUGE shocker.
Update 2: t.co URL wrapping
In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link. Wrapped links are displayed in a way that is easier to read, with the actual domain and part of the URL showing, so that you know what you are clicking on. When you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service to check if the destination site is known to contain malware, and we then will forward you on to the destination URL. All of that should happen in an instant.
You will start seeing these links on certain accounts that have opted-in to the service; we expect to roll this out to all users by the end of the year.
When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL .What does this mean for me?
A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title.
You will start seeing links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened links and lets you know where each link will take you.
When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time.
What Does This REALLY Mean?
So, what Twitter is telling us is that EVERY URL sent will be shortened to use THEIR service. Not only does this screw other shortners like Bit.ly, it completely screws individual users – like YOU and ME!
For example, I make my own short links on One Man’s Blog when I post things here. Like for example you can get to my Lady Gaga post by visiting http://onemansblog.com/gaga, even though the real URL is http://onemansblog.com/2010/01/05/sexy-hot-and-nude-5-lady-gaga-videos-get-210-million-views/.
See how that works? The benefits of shortening the URL are:
- Its easy to remember, and short for inclusion in social media sites like Twitter, Digg, Facebook, etc.
- It allows me to track the number of clicks through the link.
- It builds inbound links to MY domain, OneMansBlog.com
Twitter is effectively telling us all that they don’t care if we want to use our own link shorteners, they are going to FORCE us to use T.CO. Even though I’ve never heard a single person complain about the status quo. And I can’t believe they even had the balls to tell us this is for our own protection. They are going to scan the links for malware? WOW! That is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. They really expected us to buy that?
Consequences
You know that giant Twitter Fail Whale that we constantly get when Twitter is over capacity? Well, guess what. When they are over capacity your links are not going to work. Just imagine, Twitter will be responsible for routing every single URL ever posted. There is no way that is going to work.
Oh, and did I forget to mention? After they inject themselves into the middle of every single URL posted on Twitter they can do anything they want to with those redirects. They can decide after a certain period of time to redirect them to their own site, or an advertiser… they can start injecting pop up ads in front of every user who clicks a link… and God knows what else they are planning.
If ever there were going to be a revolution against Twitter, this should be it. 140 characters is not enough to tell a complete story, so we ALL use links. And right now Twitter is planning to steal them all. I can see nothing but evil coming from this move and I’m absolutely shocked by this decision.
The security benefits from them doing this FAR out weigh any of your arguments.
Hopefully their API is smart enough to return the original URL and the wrapper URL. That way the original URL will be displayed and still get the security benefits of the wrapper.
I am willing to bet this is how their website will work. <a href=”$wrapper_url” rel=”nofollow”>$original_url</a>
1) There is nothing stopping you using your shorted URL as well and still having all the analytics you want! I know people that pipe their URL’s through a number of shorteners for different advantages.
2) Your argument is true of every single URL shortener that already exists.
“but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title. You will start seeing links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened links and lets you know where each link will take you.”
Where does this come in? They make it sound like you’ll only see t.co links through SMSs, but on web and apps, you’ll see either the original URL or a shortened version of the same url (but not t.co).
Jeez. To be honest I have never realized what’s so good about Twitter anyway. If you subscribe to a lot of other people’s feeds you can’t really find valuable information anymore because you have like 1000 new messages on your Twitter screen in a minute, half of them being advertising. I never use it anymore. Maybe after that url shortening trick a lot of people will follow my example. :)
Janina (John),
Twitter is an awesome social tool for you to discover and connect with people around the world… Obviously for you, you also realize that the internet also provides you with the same scope of the world, in addition to RSS feeds.. you can find whatever information you are looking for without all the noise… A tip for you though would be to create LISTS of specific high quality people or topics you are looking to follow, it will make it a lot easier and cancel out the noise.
Twitter is also a great place for you to get a MESSAGE out about something you feel passionate about and want to find others with similar passions… or another words MAKE FRIENDS with people like yourself… RSS Feeds Cannot do that…
In my opinion, there may be some perceived EVIL from what twitter is doing but I think this is a way for them to CANCEL out a lot of those SPAM links (though I do belive SPammers will find a way around it)
Rich LoPresti
@seekingminds
In days of old, flying ones flag upsidedown was/is an international sign of distress. I suggest we all invert our twitter avatars as a sign of protest.
Shortening links is one of the most annoying things about tweeting. I’m happy they’ll be making it easy for normal people. For people who somehow NEED to keep existing redirects, couldn’t you just redirect (Twitter) to a redirect (Bit.ly)? Or how about just using G analytics?
It’s their business and they can run it as they choose. No one is forced to use it.
You are absolutely correct Tom. And yet, we as consumers can also band together to let them know we don’t like it and that can easily result in the reversal of a stupid decision like this.
John P.
Maybe Twitter has finally figured out how to make some money. If they control URL redirection, then they can more easily gather usage/marketing data to sell to advertisers, etc. Tracking their own URLs from users will be much easier for them since they won’t have to resolve bit.ly and other 3rd-party shortened URLs to figure out what sites are being tweeted.
Believe me Brandon, I want Twitter to make money. In fact, I’d be willing to pay a monthly fee for the service. But link hijacking is going way, way too far.
John P.
Twitter wrapping every URL with their own forwarder is not that big of a deal in itself, but users will be really dependent on their service, and security will be completely dependent on how twitter implements the URL shortening service.
Also, it’s no different from when Microsoft included Internet Explorer in the operating system. It is anti-competative, but on the other hand – it’s their service. I’m not sure we can complain too much. We should take a “wait and see” attitude. If they start redirecting to advertisements or pop-ups I think they’ll find a reduction in users. After all, twitter is not a complicated service. It would take about 20 minutes for twitter to be replaced.
What they should do is offer their own URL shortening service, and only do it on-demand. The fact that they are implementing it for everyone is the issue, as it’s eliminating other URL shortening businesses.
So what’s the difference between this and someone that has Bit.ly Pro set up? When I shorten a Yahoo link in Tweetdeck, it goes down to the yhoo.it domain – I get NONE of the analytics for that link; they all go to Yahoo.
If you can, you should have your own shortened links resolve to a URL with tracking parameters for your web analytics of choice. That way even if your short URL gets shortened by another service (geez, it’s like Inception for links), it will still resolve all the way out and you can still use those web parameters to measure and track what’s working.