url shortener Archive

The big news in the social media expert camp from last week was the notification that all links that are posted on Twitter, both on the website and using a third-party app, will now automatically be converted to use Twitter’s official t.co URL shortener. You can read the Twitter help post and the developer guide to learn more about t.co and how it works. Part of the conversation around the t.co rollout reminds me of some of the discussion when Digg launched the Diggbar.

Short tl:dr version: Just because a t.co url appears in your referral log, it does not mean that all the traffic to that url has come from Twitter.

Sean at the analytics service Clicky posted about how the change to use t.co will make it appear that Twitter has zero influence because the referral logs will show t.co instead of twitter.com going forward. When I initially read the post, I thought there was something wrong but couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. Yesterday Zee at the Next Web (note: they are a Twitter default user) created a post titled, “Twitter Just Got the Respect it Deserves”. He continues along the same lines as Clicky and has several key points:

• Twitter is now influential in terms of traffic from an “eyes of the media” standpoint
• Facebook and Stumbleupon better watch out because now Twitter will appear really big as a social media traffic driver
• Brands and businesses will now take note of how influential Twitter is
• You can search to find out which tweet was the influential one because you can search on a specific t.co url

Unfortunately it looks like there are issues with both the Clicky post (and the very wrong change they made to their service) and Zee’s statements.

Continue reading “Behavior Patterns of Twitter’s T.Co URL Shortener and Why Zee/Clicky Are Wrong” »

This morning I noticed that if you mouseover a short URL in Twitter, it displays the full URL. I have never noticed this before today. I did some searching to see if this was already reported by the Twitter blogs but came up empty.

I love this new (or new to me) feature because it prevents me from ever clicking on a short link that will take me to somewhere evil. The URL mouseover works in IE, Firefox and Chrome and appears to work about 90% of the time. It worked for me using all of the popular URL shorteners including: Bit.ly, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, TinyURL, etc. I am sure there are ways to “trick” the expanded URL but it’s a good malicious link prevention technique.

Previously, I would use the “+” option on a bit.ly link to see the info page with the final link destination for any links I considered suspect. I have always preferred the TinyURL preview page and wish all of the URL shorteners would offer this service.

In speaking with a few colleagues, it appears Twitter is using the 301 redirect on the short URL to provide the mouseover with the full URL. I’ve also heard that the Brizzly Twitter client has always provided this functionality.

In my searches I found a variety of extensions and plugins that will expand the short URLs found in tweets but now Twitter is doing this for us by default. If this is old news, please leave a comment so I can update the post with any original sources.

Here’s an example of an expanded link by placing my mouse over the link in a Louis Gray and CloudContacts tweet:

Two months ago we noted that URL shortener Cligs was closing. From our previous post, “The developer behind the Cli.gs URL shortener service has announced that it will no longer accept requests as of today. Forwarding will continue at least to the end of November and an export option will be forthcoming.  Cligs notes that they have tens of thousands of registered user accounts, and completes tens of millions of forwards a month.”

Today Cligs announced that the service has been acquired by Mister Wong.  Mister Wong is Germany’s largest social bookmarking service and we selected it as a Top 10 German Internet service.

I tried to get Cligs developer Pierre Far to share the amount of the acquisition but he would only reply with, “undisclosed.” Pierre did note, “I only considered serious buyers who would obviously take good care of Cligs’ existing users. For that, Mister Wong is a great choice and a large part of why they won out. Kai Tietjen, founder of Mister Wong, summarized their motivation by saying that, “Cligs is a complete service with a unique set of tools and a solid user base. Competition is healthy for the market and it would be a real shame to see such a useful service disappear. We are happy to add Cligs to our existing portfolio of Web 2.0 services and we look forward to welcoming all its users to the Wong family.”

Far will stay on during the transition but it appears will not continue on with the Mister Wong team.