Twitter to Change Links: They Won’t Count Against the 140 Character Limit

In an effort to remove the obscurity of shortened links and to prevent malware and phishing attacks, Twitter has begun the rollout t.co, its official URL shortener, along with some major changes to how the microblogging platform handles links.

In a blog post aptly titled Links and Twitters: Length Shouldn’t Matter, Twitter’s Sean Garrett announced that the company is taking a new approach to URLs. Not only will all links on Twitter.com and Twitter apps be “wrapped” in t.co links, but they will no longer count against the 140 character limit. These change will occur throughout the summer.

What’s Happening with t.co

The first change is the auto-wrapping of links with the t.co short URL. This URL will replace twt.tl, which the company has been using to shorten links in direct messages for several months. However, you won’t see t.co appear very often, if at all, on Twitter.com or your favorite Twitter app, because the company is changing how links are treated on the platform.

Whenever it’s possible to display a longer link, Twitter will display that URL information so that users aren’t fooled by obscure links that turn out to be malware. Twitter’s example is http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275966329&sr=8-1%22, which links to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s new book. In a text message, you’d see the link automatically turned into a t.co link (due to the SMS character limit), but on Twitter.com, it will display either part of the link (amazon.com/Delivering-), the page title, or the entire link. What will exactly be displayed has yet to be decided.

Second, t.co links will be routed through a service that will eventually make t.co part of the Promoted Tweets algorithm. That means the links you click will determine what ads are displayed in Twitter’s new system. Twitter is also looking into providing analytics from t.co data for companies using Twitter’s commercial accounts service. The routing will also check whether the link in question comes from a malicious source, thus preventing malware and phishing attacks.

Finally, and most importantly, Twitter is changing how links are counted. This part of the announcement wasn’t in Sean Garrett’s blog post, but was instead posted on the Twitter Development Talk Google Group:

“the way the Twitter API counts characters is going to change ever so slightly. our 140 characters is now going to be defined as 140 characters after link wrapping. t.co links are of a predictable length — they will always be 20 characters. after we make this live, it will be feasible to send in the text for a status that is greater than 140 characters. the rule is after the link wrapping, the text transforms to 140 characters or fewer. we’ll be using the same logic that is in twitter-text-rb to figure out what is a URL. ”

Summary: T.co links won’t be counted in Twitter’s famous 140 character count. It’s unclear whether this only applies to the first link or to an unlimited number of links per status update, but you can be sure that the company will clarify those issues as it rolls out the changes.

For now, only a few accounts have t.co capabilities, including Twitter’s @rsarver and @raffi. However, that will grow throughout the summer as the company tests the link wrapping service.

We’re still digging through the information, but while we do that, we want your first impressions. Will this change Twitter for the better or for the worse? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: bit.ly, t.co, trending, twitter