Twitter announced last week that it will begin wrapping all links posted through their service with it’s own t.co domain. We will begin seeing these links on certain accounts that have opted-in to the service and it will be rolled out to all users by the end of the year. At that time all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co url.Twitter’s new url shortener will essentially do what any third-party url shortener service currently does which is to shorten a long url link to fit into the 140 character requirements of a tweet with the exception of providing the ability to track the clicks on links and any analytics that go with that. At least for the time being. Twitter’s vague statement on this : “We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time.”This move by Twitter means it’s stepping up the competition for third-party developers. For marketers, it surely means the new service will be providing link tracking analytics directly from Twitter. When a user clicks on a wrapped link it will go through Twitter’s service to check for any malware at the destination site. It will then forward the user to the destination url.Some say that as a result of the level of spam that has targeted Twitter it makes sense for Twitter to step up security by offering it’s own url shortener service. Others think that Twitter is trying to step into the url shortener service market and roll out it’s own revenue generating service to users that enable them to track the clicks on these links.How about you what do you think about Twitter’s latest move with the t.co url shortener and how it could affect your marketing efforts?
Twitter announced last week that it will begin wrapping all links posted through their service with it’s own t.co domain. We will begin seeing these links on certain accounts that have opted-in to the service and it will be rolled out to all users by the end of the year. At that time all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co url.Twitter’s new url shortener will essentially do what any third-party url shortener service currently does which is to shorten a long url link to fit into the 140 character requirements of a tweet with the exception of providing the ability to track the clicks on links and any analytics that go with that. At least for the time being. Twitter’s vague statement on this : “We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time.”This move by Twitter means it’s stepping up the competition for third-party developers. For marketers, it surely means the new service will be providing link tracking analytics directly from Twitter. When a user clicks on a wrapped link it will go through Twitter’s service to check for any malware at the destination site. It will then forward the user to the destination url.Some say that as a result of the level of spam that has targeted Twitter it makes sense for Twitter to step up security by offering it’s own url shortener service. Others think that Twitter is trying to step into the url shortener service market and roll out it’s own revenue generating service to users that enable them to track the clicks on these links.How about you what do you think about Twitter’s latest move with the t.co url shortener and how it could affect your marketing efforts?
