

When is a URL shortener not a URL shortener?  - pavel_lishin
http://qntm.org/twit

======
jedberg
> Once it's fixed (I'll let them know about it tomorrow and I expect it'll be
> rectified in a day or two) I'll update this page, but until that time, try
> it for yourself.

Sadly, it will never be fixed. This is not a bug to them. They are forcing
every url on twitter to go through t.co for click tracking. It is no longer
possible to put a url into a tweet without going through t.co, unless you
leave off the http, which makes it unclickable in a lot of clients.

~~~
irons
Twitter's description says wrapping only applies to links of 19 characters or
longer.

<https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/1062>

Sounds like a bug.

~~~
hboon
Might be a bug, but the posting API has also been updated to allow developers
to flag that all URLs to be wrapped, no matter the length. And it looks like
the plan in the long run is to wrap all links.

------
jarin
This doesn't just bug me for URLs that are shorter than the t.co URL, but also
when I'm posting a link to a website and I want people to see the full URL.

e.g. It is often sufficiently descriptive to tweet "This is a great site:
<http://actionfiguresridingkittens.tumbly.mil>

~~~
ceejayoz
Twitter has implemented a decent solution for that, which most clients
(including the website) respect - it includes a display_url parameter along
with the shortened URL in tweets fetched via the API.

~~~
v21
But the displayed URL is truncated with an ellipsis at the end. The OPs URL is
likely long enough to trigger that. Sometimes a long URL is all you want to
share, but that is now impossible to do. A tweet saying
"<http://hotchickswithstubbedtoesmakingsexfaces.com/> exists" is a decent
tweet, but a tweet saying "<http://hotchickswit..>. exists" isn't as good. And
sure, you can mouseover to see the full link, but that's balls.

------
albedoa
A solution to this would be for Twitter to post the t.co URL if the original
URL is longer than the t.co URL or if the original URL is too long to fit in
the tweet. Else, it would display the original URL but direct it to the t.co
URL for tracking.

So a tweet that says:

    
    
        Check it out: http://zombo.com
    

Would be posted as:

    
    
        Check it out: <a href="http://t.co/whatever">http://zombo.com</a>
    

This would preserve Twitter's tracking while maximizing the amount of
information in the displayed URL as well as meeting the user's expectations,
intent, and needs. Thoughts?

~~~
corin_
That's what they already do through their web interface. And for any
apps/whatever using the API, they give both version of the URL so that
developers can do the same thing.

------
jowiar
There are pigeonhole principle issues with the concept of url shortening - the
same that apply to data compression in general.

With regards to urls that are a bit of ways down the tree
(<http://www.foo.com/bar/baz/whatever>), this isn't really an issue, as
generally within a domain, the url-friendliness comes at an expense of a great
deal of length, and you can do something like:

shortened url := <http://short.nr/shorten(domain)shorten(tail)>

and end up with something shorter.

When trying to shorten already-short urls, though, characters will not
necessarily be gained.

From Twitter's perspective, the ideal solution might be to count "urls" as a
fixed length, or an attachment, with respect to the length of a tweet so as to
sidestep this issue entirely.

~~~
philh
If all you want is shortening, then there shouldn't be a problem: if the t.co
link is longer, just don't use it. This is different from data compression
because "pointers are automatically dereferenced": there's no functional
difference between t.co/foo sending you to google.com and t.co/bar sending you
to t.co/foo. (If I'm wrong about this, then it's still possible to not-make-
longer everything that isn't a t.co link.)

A similar case with data compression would be if you can guarantee that the
decompressed data is never a valid compressed file. In this case, compress
something iff that makes it shorter, and decompress something iff it's
compressed.

------
stilist
t.co isn’t just shortening—it’s also click tracking.

~~~
ceejayoz
That's pretty much an assumed feature of any URL shortener these days. Many
folks use them precisely for that sort of analytics.

------
zalew
this 'feature' works even with <http://bit.ly> or <http://t.co>, lol

------
mmahemoff
It's surprising that URL shorteners are so central to how Twitter works, but
they only recently built it into their own UI. I've been using the website
interface lately and find myself having to shorten externally and paste it
into Twitter, as the 120 default is sometimes too short.

------
Iarna
Well, regardless what their policy says, it's been buggy this way since they
introduced it, and they've thus far ignored the many, many bug reports they've
gotten about it. If yours gets through to them that would be wonderful, but
I'm not holding my breath.

------
ramki
Cannot believe that developer forgot to include this at the end of shortening
process:

if(strShortenedURL.Length > strURL.Length) { //Handle this case //donot use
shortened version, use original URL }

~~~
oliciv
It's not in their interest to do so, as it would leave already short links
without them being able to track them

------
bradfordw
When it's ajar?

------
amateurguru
link wrapper != link shortener

~~~
eyalbd1
totally agree, some "shortening" services simply give you some value add
services like - <http://sclst.mp> , http//su.pr etc.

