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Twitter to Provide Link Shortening
Yesterday, twitter announced via their blog upcoming plans of integrating their own link shortening service. They will now be wrapping all un-shortened url’s with the t.co url. The 140 character limit makes it quite difficult for individuals to share information and include relevant links to their tweets. Many users have become accustomed to using some of the most popular shortening services on the web such as bit.ly, tinyurl and owl.ly. Twitter has seen the growth and significance in use of these services and wants to enter the shortening url realm. In the coming months, if you place a url in the tweet box without it being shortened by another service, it will be converted into a t.co link. This move is great news for advertisers and marketers looking to make use of twitter’s sponsored tweets and commercial accounts. However, these metrics are not accessible to the average user who includes a link. Another reasoning for the adaptation of the t.co shortening service is to filter malicious links. Better late than never for twitter to more in this direction but due to the existing platforms available and the popularity amongst them, only time will tell the acceptance of the new url service by the twitter community.
