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 https://onemansblog.com/gaga, even though the real URL is https://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.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the obvious solution – take your micro-blogging ‘business’ elsewhere. There are already other free services out there – http://identi.ca comes to mind. And you can even stand up your very own based on the open source http://status.net.
Of course, the real ‘problem’ (depending on how you look at it) will be how to effectively aggregate that data so that we can all micro-blog and communicate with each other regardless of the platform/service we choose. Yes, this is the same walled-garden issue that social networking is experiencing (a.k.a Facebook vs the rest).
I have account on twitter but I don’t understand why anyone use it.
It has only 140 character that limit you.
if you really hate twitter why don’t you delete the account?
I agree that this a big mistake from twitter, and a great loss to its users.
It’s much like what myspace did in 2007 when they began converting all profile and comment links to msplinks. The stated purpose was to get central control of phishing and spamming which was rampant across the site. I hated it then and blogged about it. I have to admit now that it did seem to coincide with a great reduction in phishing and spamming. But it also came with a great loss in the value of shared information. There is potential value to the reader in the info contained within a link, and there is potentially statistical value also to the writer. I hope twitter will reverse this decision and not require link manipulation.
I understand your arguments. The problem is they are great for the people who use the internet wisely. Unfortunately the world is filled with morons. These people do need their hand held. Most people click on the dumbest stuff. Look at facebook and the crap viruses people send around because they click silly links. I really do not see twitter being the last to do this. We are likely going see it a lot. More social networks may start to do the same, if it works for twitter. Either that or they will try and do it better.
The biggest problem here is whether Twitter is able to TAKE the extra load of passing every link through their anti-malware detecting service. And if and when they do detect something that has malware, what would they do with those links or tweets?
Also would the service ruin already shortened links?
Currently my short links are like myqute.com/3035 So simple and straight-away, people (who’ve been following me for some time) know it’s my blog and that they can trust it.
Let me tell you the whole story as to why Twitter is doing this. We have this thing called the 1st amendment of the constitution, which states our right to free speech. Now why this is important, is because there are web sites that government officials do not want people to see, but because of the 1st amendment they can’t just take these sites down because that would bring too much attention to these officials plans. So they mark these sites as malicious so that people leave the site instantly. Now I’m not saying that all of these sites are safe to go to, as some may actually be malicious, but I know for a fact that there are websites that are marked malicious but are actually completely safe, as I have been to them. Now of course any corporation that sees an opportunity to benefit will take that opportunity such as redirecting the link so they get the credit, so I’m not just blaming this on gov officials.
I realize that some who read this may now be wondering what plans the gov officials don’t want attention brought to. So before I say anything I encourage anyone who has any question in what I am saying to research it and find the supporting evidence to either debunk or prove what I am saying. First of all these gov officials that I am talking about are not U.S. gov, though they do control the U.S. gov. This is a secret government that I am talking about called the Builderberg group. This group wants a one world gov, that is ran in their best interests not the people. This group consists of but is not limited to the Rothschild lineage and also belongs to the occult Illuminates. According to Milton William Cooper, a retired member of the Intelligence Briefing Team of the Commander In Chief of the Pacific Fleet as a Petty Officer in the US Navy, talk radio show host andwho was killed by authorities on 11/5/2001, the Builderberg group was created by U.S. gov officials, to handle and maintain the secrecy of alien visitors. So go do a search on this information that I have given you and debunk me, if you can.
To me the part that disturbs me most is that I would not be able to use my own link shortening (Prettylink Pro) to drive my own traffic through my site.
Maybe they will offer T.CO as the default and charge a small fee to people that opt to use their own. I could live with that.
I’m with you on this one John and if Twitter goes through with it I will find another source for the type of service they provide.
I’m with you. This is crazy. I don’t love twitter that much. I make my own short links as well and I wan’t no part of these twitter links.
The problem really is the 140 character limit. Being able to tweet an entire URL, and for people to see where they will be redirected, is a great safety feature.
The ability of you and others to know whether your followers followed your link to the NY Times or Gizmodo, etc., is not of utmost importance. You could point to a link onto your site, where you summarize and link off, and if I know your site, and trust it, then I would have no issues clicking it. If I see a shortened URL, then I have to wonder where it will take me and whether I should trust you and trust that you haven’t been hacked etc.
I think it is stupid, that in 2010, we still have to live with limitations of pagers from the 1980s. Why 140 characters? The phone carriers make tons of money off of SMS. Why not give them a reason to go to 300 characters? Or 500? And since presumably, Twitter knows when they are pushing a Tweet out for SMS vs client or web consumption, why they don’t handle splitting over multiple SMSs, instead of dumbing down the entire experience?
I know some people think it is cute that everyone has to make their tweets fit and it’s a fun challenge up there with Haiku and one-line shell scripts, but then we don’t limit our monitors to only support the bit depth of our cellphones, or limit our keyboards to have 12 buttons.
The insanity of the situation is clearly visible when someone retweets another person’s tweet, and the addition of the Twitter id forces truncation of the original, and any URL contained at the end.
If you’re going to start a movement, start one to remove the silly 140 character limit.
The whole purpose of the 140 limit is to keep tweet concise. If they allow more characters then every tweet would be as long as your comment. Info is hard to find as it is without every tweet reading like a NY Times article.
Not good, when I use Pretty Link to push awareness for my different sites. And even Hootsuite links will be affected, not to mention bit.ly. Hopefully the people at Twitter are too ambitious and this will not work as intended. As you point out, the amount of links they get on Twitter has to be a staggering amount. I cant’ think they’d be able pull this off. Let’s hope not anyway.
i never use twitter anyway. i have never used it – although i have a twitter account, it has sat, unused, from the day i opened it, and now that i have no use for it, i’m planning on deleting it…
the way to object about this plan is to take your business elsewhere. if you really hate twitter that much, why don’t you quit using it?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
“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).
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.
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>