posted by Public Relations
Last week, we began our multiple-part series on the new features that Twitter has rolled out. In Part 1, we discussed the expanded viewing panes and embedded multimedia. This installment will focus on Twitter changing the landscape of URL shorteners.
Out with the URL Shorteners as we know them…
Even though a user can now remain on Twitter.com for images and video, links to articles and blog posts will still direct you to a different website. In the future, users will hopefully be able to preview the website before jumping to it, but for now Twitter has create a short-term solution to help prevent users from clicking ambiguous links created by URL shorteners.
In an e-mail sent to all users, Twitter announced their link wrapping service t.co. They previously used t.co for links embedded in direct messages, but now this service will also automatically alter (or wrap) any links that are posted in tweets.
Although users are still more than welcome to use URL shorteners such as bit.ly (one of thunder::tech’s favorites), t.co will wrap these links to let users know exactly where the link directs them while warning them of any potentially malicious content. Currently, there isn’t an example of how this will affect the links’ appearance or if it would interfere with any URL shortening analytics.
Twitter’s effort to protect its users
Fortunately, Twitter is now taking a proactive step in preventing users from clicking malicious links. The downfall is right now, t.co is not equipped to provide the same valuable statistics that bit.ly provides for free. According to the Twitter blog, routing links through t.co will eventually contribute to the metrics behind their Promoted Tweets platform, which is vague. We also don’t know what metrics t.co will be able to provide.
Those of you who use URL shorteners should watch closely for the possible implications that could soon follow. It is pretty obvious that Twitter is attempting to have all links posted through their website and not an external client. Twitter will be one step closer if they can produce valuable analytics via t.co at no cost, but that is yet to be seen. Why don’t we just fast forward to a link not counting towards your 140 characters already?
Twitter’s explanation on URL shorteners and the possible impact of t.co is confusing but important if your organization currently relies on services such as bit.ly for social media tracking. For further details on this service, visit Twitter’s blog. We hope that Twitter will provide more support and information once all of these features are rolled out.
Our next installment with highlight the new Twitter keyboard shortcuts.
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