A Nice Side Effect Of The Tweet Button: Real URLs Back In The Stream
August 12, 2010 at 16:06 PM EDT
The link shortening revolution that has taken place the past few years has been interesting for a number of reasons. But one of the most interesting aspects is that we're all now trained to click on a URL even if we have no idea what it actually is. Sure, you may be visiting TechCrunch.com, but in Twitter's stream, it has been hidden as http://bit.ly/lkowieofi or the like. Twitter Tweet Button changes that. The new Tweet Button, which was officially unveiled by Twitter earlier today (and is already up and running on TechCrunch), by default wraps all links in Twitter's own t.co URL shortener . But this shortening is only for the pop-up tweet box and so Twitter can make sure the URL isn't a malicious one. When it is sent out to your tweet stream, you'll now see the actual URL (though abbreviated).