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Twitter launches own shortener t.co

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Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#31

Post by natrius »

apike wrote: post #27
natrius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clients could have easily done this before. HEAD /2Mp91y HTTP/1.1 Host: bit.ly ... Status: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Location: http://news.ycombinator.com/ If the goal was minimizing requests, Twitter could've saved the endpoint on its end and passed the data through the API. A new shortener was unnecessary, though it's easy to see why it is desirable for them.

Querying each URL would be impractical to do on the Twitter client side, especially on a mobile device, even simply from the latency before you can render perspective. You could render the tweets with the shortened links and then reflow the text if/when each HEAD request returns, but that would probably result in a crummy, slow experience for the reader as they scroll through tweets. Twitter could indeed have done it…

> Still, skipping the middle man is both more efficient

The middle man will not be skipped. It will be wrapped. Two redirects instead of one.

http://twitter.com/twitterapi/status/15741693182

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#32

Post by DougBTX »

fizx wrote: post #20
paulgb wrote: post #9

> If you are already partial to a particular shortener when you tweet, you can continue to use it for link shortening and analytics as you normally would, and we'll wrap the shortened links you submit. I really hope this habit doesn't catch on. If it does each link will have three points of failure instead of one (as it should) or two (as it will with t.co).

Twitter will likely crawl the final targets of the urls, so that when bit.ly goes out of business, the t.co urls pointing to bit.ly can get redirected to the canonical link. So I don't think it's quite as bad as you're thinking.

Apparently if you have a unique word in the expanded version of your url, then search for your tweet containing only the shortened url using the unique word, you will still find the tweet. I've not tested it myself, but I took it as evidence that they are indeed caching fully resolved urls.

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#33

Post by andrewtj »

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.

That's just a tidbit thrown around to soothe those irked by the limit. It's been well over a decade since the last mobile phone was sold that couldn't handle long/concatenated SMS. The reality is that the 140 character limit is just an arbitrary one; one that makes Twitter, Twitter.

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#34

Post by natrius »

solutionyogi wrote: post #29
natrius wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Twitter doesn't check for a valid response at each URL, then this will be possible anyway. If it does check, then this wouldn't be possible anyway.

Twitter gets millions of tweets and I am sure good percentage of them will have URLs. And if they start checking valid response for each URL, I think soon they will have to build a new data center just for this task. Also, what if the URL is temporarily down? What should they do?

I don't think they need to check for valid URLs. My point is just that disguising text as a URL will be possible regardless unless you check for 404s or ellipsize the URLs. Using a URL shortener isn't necessary to make URLs count for a constant character length.

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#35

Post by gojomo »

arohner wrote: post #5

"We will be updating the TOS to require you to check t.co and register the click." Damn. Looks like URL shorteners are here to stay, permanently, and twitter is crowding out all existing link shorteners.

"We will be updating the TOS to require you to check t.co and register the click."

This quote does not appear in the Twitter announcement; is it from elsewhere, or speculation?

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#36

Post by apike »

natrius wrote: post #31
apike wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Querying each URL would be impractical to do on the Twitter client side, especially on a mobile device, even simply from the latency before you can render perspective. You could render the tweets with the shortened links and then reflow the text if/when each HEAD request returns, but that would probably result in a crummy, slow experience for the reader as they scroll through tweets. Twitter could indeed have done it…

> Still, skipping the middle man is both more efficient The middle man will not be skipped. It will be wrapped. Two redirects instead of one. http://twitter.com/twitterapi/status/15741693182

I've updated my post to be clear that I meant more efficient for Twitter, not the end user in that case. Also, my assumption is that people use this instead of normal URL shorteners in most cases.

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#37

Post by chaosmachine »

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.

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#39

Post by natrius »

apike wrote: post #36
natrius wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still, skipping the middle man is both more efficient The middle man will not be skipped. It will be wrapped. Two redirects instead of one. http://twitter.com/twitterapi/status/15741693182

I've updated my post to be clear that I meant more efficient for Twitter, not the end user in that case. Also, my assumption is that people use this instead of normal URL shorteners in most cases.

Ah, I misunderstood.

Regardless, URL shorteners cannot be described as beneficial for users (except those who want to track clicks on their links). They make it take longer to get to the page. They are an extra point of failure. They are bad for users. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, but it isn't altruistic by any measure.

Re: Twitter launches own shortener t.co

#40

Post by TeHCrAzY »

zavulon wrote: post #30
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?

Yeah I was wondering the same thing... After reading their website though, I got the impression cointernet.co guys are trying too hard to convince how much of a hit .co will be. Also, isn't there a plan in the works to make everything and a kitchen sink as their own .tld?

I think you are referring to the custom TLD's, which are currently available, if you have the huge amounts of money to acquire one.
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