Twitter Links Poised For a Makeover

Last week Twitter announced on its blog that it would be rolling out its own link shortener this summer in an effort to streamline and better track the link sharing process on the social network. This new shortener will also provide transparency in the links sharing system by allowing followers to see where the shortened link will take them and reassure them the links are not malicious or spam.

Once the new shortener is fully launched, all links on Twitter will appear with either the URL t.co or as an edited version of its former self. For example, if you wanted to share the page http://www.socialtoaster.com/about/events, it may appear as http://t.co/xyz or as http://www.socialtoaster.com/about.

Currently you have to use a third party link shortener like HootSuite or bit.ly to condense long links and squeeze them in under the 140 character limit. Similar to these other shorteners, our software uses unique shortened links under the sot.ag URL to broadcast and track links promoted via your Brand Ambassador network.

So what does Twitter’s new URL shortener mean for our SocialToaster links? In essence future SocialToaster links will look different on the outside, having been wrapped with the t.co URL, but remain the same on the inside. When an Ambassador’s connection clicks on a SocialToaster- produced link on Twitter it will still direct them to the page chosen by the content creator (like this one, if you happened to click on this link from a social network) and remain 100% trackable, even though it may not display with our sot.ag URL. We are very glad that Twitter is taking even more steps to ensure that its feeds are authentic and spam-free and contain content that is of genuine interest to every Tweeter.

While we don’t expect to see t.co links all over Twitter until later this summer, be on the lookout for them on a handful of develop streams like @TwitterAPI, @rsarver, and @raffi in the coming days. Happy Tweeting!