Twitter shortens URLs

Yesterday, twitter officially released it’s url shortner “t.co”. Now, any url that is above 20 characters will automatically be replaced by a t.co link. It is automatic in that you have no choice, it will do it for you regardless if you want it to or not.

Here is twitter’s offical statement: ““Beginning August 15th, when a user tweets or sends a direct message containing a URL 20 characters long or greater (the length of URLs wrapped with t.co), the URL will automatically be converted to a t.co-wrapped link. We will eventually wrap all links, regardless of length, but until then there’s nothing you need to do to support this change. When we’re ready to wrap all links, we’ll give you plenty of time and make another announcement.”

Twitter’s goal in this seems to be so that then cause run their own analytics on links on twitter and see exactly how users respond to the links that are posted. Do you like the new url shortening system on twitter?