Twitter launches own shortener t.co • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#61

Post by ben1040 » Wed, Jun 09, 2010, 2:09 AM UTC

andrewtj wrote: post #46

coderdude wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still can't send text messages over 160 characters to anyone not on my carrier (Verizon) so I'm not sure where you're getting that figure from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenated_SMS Perhaps this is another anomaly that Americans have to put up with from their carriers — not being one I wouldn't know.

Anecdote is not the singular of data, but I have been able to send/receive long messages using Android and iPhone on AT&T.

Just yesterday I even noticed Android's core SMS app is even nice enough to tell you when the message is overflowing into a second SMS, so you know that you and the recipient will get billed for more than one SMS. Which brings me to another idea:

Perhaps the billing issue is more of a concern as well -- receiving concatenated messages certainly would cost more for (American) users not on unlimited SMS plans, and presumably would cost more for Twitter to send out through their gateway?

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#62

Post by papachito » Wed, Jun 09, 2010, 2:18 AM UTC

ericd wrote: post #49

chaosmachine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.co is a huge opportunity for squatters. I can't tell you how many times I've typed "site.co" instead of "site.com" because I hit enter too quickly. For legitimate uses, it's terrible. Imagine having to say "that's co NOT com... see-oh. no M!" every time you give out your domain.

This is ridiculous... why is this TLD being allowed? Its main use is going to be abuse, ranging from squatting to phishing (chase.co, paypal.co, anyone?).

> why is this TLD being allowed?

Colombia?

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#63

Post by dboyd » Wed, Jun 09, 2010, 2:29 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #47

I wonder when some tiny country will decide to just turn their entire top-level national TLD into a url shortener.

This has been done: http://to./

HN: http://to./4dw2

Note that the 'dot' (in to.) is necessary to make the hostname absolute, so it doesn't fail in pretty much every browser. Otherwise, the URL should just be: http://to/

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#64

Post by mitchellhislop » Wed, Jun 09, 2010, 2:30 AM UTC

marbletiles wrote: post #54

"routing links through this service will eventually contribute to the metrics behind our Promoted Tweets platform and provide an important quality signal for our Resonance algorithm" So this is Twitter's Digg bar: they want to wrap and trace every link that goes in a Tweet? So much for all those custom bit.ly domains. So much for bit.ly. These guys are going crass quick. @alex's decision to quit is less and less surp…

Also, reading through the dev documentation for this, "No user will ever see a t.co URL".

All they are doing is wrapping the URL, not actually changing anything. All services that have their own URL's will be 100% fine.

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#65

Post by makmanalp » Wed, Jun 09, 2010, 2:44 AM UTC

cmelbye wrote: post #38

sbierwagen wrote: post #28

Any reason Twitter just doesn't let you use HTML anchors, and skip this whole mess?

That would be incredibly unhelpful. It's much more to type, it's yet another thing to sanitize, and most users don't know HTML.

You just do: visible_text|url , or maybe that whole thing in brackets. It turns it into an anchor. There, was that so hard?

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#66

Post by dolphenstein » Wed, Jun 09, 2010, 2:51 AM UTC

Why not just do a direct link and just shorten the anchor text? Bypass all this t.co crap.

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#67

Post by briansmith » Wed, Jun 09, 2010, 2:53 AM UTC

coderdude wrote: post #12

mattmanser wrote: post #10

What is wrong with these people, just fix twitter so url's don't count to the count. Morons. There's no better user experience to a shortened url, it's like having unprotected sex with a random in a nightclub, you've no idea what you could end up with. Repeat after me, shortened urls break the web and are inherently evil.

It's been said one hundred million times, but the reason is for SMS.

It is an excuse.

At most, they need to shorten the links only for SMS; they don't need to shorten them for the API or for the website (as they've just demonstrated).

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#68

Post by eli » Wed, Jun 09, 2010, 2:54 AM UTC

chaosmachine wrote: post #37

SkyMarshal wrote: post #21

Interesting shoutout at the end to COInternet and the now-global .co TLD. I wasn't even aware of that. They're running quite a marketing campaign for the launch, anyone think it will rival .com's popularity?

.co is a huge opportunity for squatters. I can't tell you how many times I've typed "site.co" instead of "site.com" because I hit enter too quickly. For legitimate uses, it's terrible. Imagine having to say "that's co NOT com... see-oh. no M!" every time you give out your domain.

Doesn't seem like it'd be any better or worse than .cm

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#69

Post by briansmith » Wed, Jun 09, 2010, 2:57 AM UTC

Besides URL shorteners being totally unnecessary, this just slows down users' browsing and diminishes their privacy. Basically, every Twitter app will have to become Spyware in order to comply with Twitter's new ToS.

FWIW, Here are my messages to the Twitter developer list about it:

http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/msg/...

I think it is disgusting how Twitter has appropriated the old post-9/11 "we're spying on you for for own safety" stance that governments have been terrorizing citizens with. Basically, their spyware is protecting you from...other spyware. All for a fraction of a fraction of a penny per click.

Also note that their t.co shortener will create links that are 19 characters long. But, j.mp links are only 18 characters long, which means t.co links won't even be as short as possible. So, it's worse all around.

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#70

Post by ramchip » Wed, Jun 09, 2010, 3:31 AM UTC

DrSprout wrote: post #24

solutionyogi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://That.will.probably.lead.to.abuse.as.I.can.send.a.long...

Yes, it would be horrible if people could send messages longer than 140 characters via Twitter. The Internet as we know it would collapse.

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