Twitter has announced that it will, in the near future, wrap all links posted in tweets with their t.co wrapper (details here).
This gives them, as they state, the opportunity to be proactive in blocking spam or phishing links and also the power to run metrics – who follows the link and when, how the link propagates across the web.
It appears that developers may still be able to decode the t.co links into their original form with a little further effort (I think their brief is unclear as to whether this applies to all t.co shortened links).
I dislike this idea for a few reasons:
- Context – Anything that obfuscates a link target before you click it is bad for convenience (you can’t gloss over a URL you’ve seen already) and safety (you can’t guess whether the link is malicious). Sometimes I like to post a link without any description or comment- the link is self-describing, or I wish the visitor to make their own mind up – the new policy knocks a hole in this.
- Stability – Twitter seems to be pretty stable nowadays, but any extra link in the chain necessarily increases the risk of downtime- if you’re already using a link shortener for metrics, there will be an extra middleman.
- Control – A third-party has control over the destination of your link. Unlikely (but possible) scenarios include advert click-throughs, your link placed within Twitter’s frame and killed links on Twitter’s whim.
- Personality – Many use their own custom link shorteners, for fun and style. These will be masked.
They mention developers will be able to tap into these metrics via the API. I wonder if access to large-scale link data will be a revenue stream for them?
Will this kill existing link shortening services?