Twitter introduces automatic link-shortening (hurrah!)
As easy as link-shortening services bit.ly and tiny.url are to use, external services are always a bit of a faff. So tweeters everywhere will be very happy to hear that Twitter has introduced automatic link-shortening.
It works automatically – just paste your full link into the tweet box, and hit send. The link will then appear in your tweet, abbreviated to 19 characters. Like magic, if you will.
The shortening will kick in if the link is longer than 13 characters, and the count box will take into account the shortening when showing you how many characters you have left.
The new service is called t.co, and an incremental roll-out started yesterday.
“Since we show a shortened version of the original link, people will know which site the link points to,” Twitter wrote on its blog. “This service also increases security. If users click links that are reported as malicious, we direct them to a page that warns them.”
What’s not to like.
