Why the mandatory tinyurls?

Edit Subject

If I remember right, tinyURLs are used only when the original URL is 30 characters or longer. If it's shorter than that, Twitter leaves the URL intact.

I also think the mandatory tinyurls are a bad idea. Many URLs are pretty and contain very meaningful content. I often decide from the URL whether I want to click through or not.

I agree with Ole, and I'm very annoyed by Twitter doing this. I've sent a 'help' request to them about it.

Agreed, if I link to a post on my blog, I want it to be obvious that the link is to my blog. I also don't appreciate having to fit the character limit with the long URL, only to have the URL shortened leaving me with excess available characters that I don't get the chance to use.

Besides that, I prefer to use snipurl.com for long links as I can customise the short link. Mandatory tinyurl is bad.

TinyURL is mandatory because it makes URLs manageable. No google juice should come from twitter from either tinyurl or normal URLs because all links are set as "nofollow" in twitter web. Even if TinyURLs were unfurled they still wouldn't count to Google.

140 characters implies certain sacrifices and one of them is having URLs truncated somehow. URLs included in tweets are supposed to be explained in the rest of the tweet and are meant to be clicked based on that description.

Twitter is NOT a SEO tool to manipulate Google (Twitter's Pagerank would affect the site's pagerank unfairly).

If the links were not "nofollow" then the "Google juice" would be transmited anyway as TinyURL does a standard "301 redirect" that tells google to pay attention to the final URL, not the redirector.

This is a design decision but there are plenty of extensiones and clients that unfurl TinyURL to show the full URL.

If there's no SEO perk, then I guess there's no problem with tinyurl for me. What I wish though is that the Tinyurl could be generated before you start your tweet so you know how much space you have left.

Yesterday, I wanted to mention I updated an old blog post yesterday and put a link in my tweet. The link itself was 60 characters, but would become much shorter after the tiny url was generated. I however had to keep my tweet at under 80 characters in order to send it.

If the Tinyurl was generated first, then I could have made the tweet content longer and more descriptive

While I agree URL shortening is necessary in this case, and Twitter should not help in SEO, I do not want to be yet another person relying on TinyURL to direct people to my content. Twitter should either use a multitude of services, either at random or let the user choose, rather than being locked down to one service.

I still think that mandatory shortening of URLs is bad. Like others have said, I want my followers to be able to see what the URL actually is. Often, I have enough characters in my tweet to include the full URL. I'll use a link shortening service when I want/need to. I don't understand this "design decision."

I think tinyURL is a great product/design decision. It allows the user to focus on their content w/o having to worry about the length of the URL. Just look at the URL for this post: http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/to...

138 characters. Wow I bet you could really express your thought with those last two characters :)

Focusing on content rather than URL length is a good point. But clearly some people would rather have control over what gets tweeted. Perhaps this should be an option that users can set. Personally, I think what I put in the box should be what comes out in my tweet!

If the tweet is under the character limit, why does Twitter mess with it at all? This "feature" is just annoying and invasive. I'm sure tinyurl loves it though.

It would be nice if there was a way to not auto-shorten urls. For example, I want to post a few useful urls in the tweet, and I want them to show, I don't want them obscured.

Can we file a request with twitter somehow? Or is this message sufficient?

I think Twitter must have heard our cries.
A few days ago I posted a 61 character url and it was NOT auto-shortened

I think we need Captain User Research to the rescue!

Twitter should find out what their users would prefer. btw: This post doesn't count as scientific research.

If it's something people really want then they should add non-tiny URLs as an option. If its something their users REALLY REALLY want then it should be the default setting.

Problem solved (well except the engineering part) :)

why use tinyurl if there are shorter alternatives, like te.tl ?

I would rather Twitter NOT modify my Tweet... we already have a hard 140 character limit. If that limit is adequate, then it shouldn't matter if I use up some of it with a long URL. Using any URL shortening service doesn't really help since the characters don't get returned to me to use. As others have said, it would be better if we could control what we tweet. There are times when the URL itself is the message.

Another issue is that tinyurl.com links to some simply awful anti Net Neutrality stuff on their homepage, e.g.: http://www.dontregulate.org/ . Pretty ridiculous, and I imagine Twitter is in favor of Net neutrality.

it's all about choice - so let's have some :)

I forgot to mention this earlier, by the way, I'm @chadrem on twitter.

Cheers

"earlier"=6 months ago?

I asked Bo and Ryan from Twooting.com a question about URL shortening and they responded at 26:40 in Twooting Episode 36.

I'm posting my response to them here because I thought you might be interested.

Hi Bo and Ryan,

Thanks for airing my question about URL shortening.

Unfortunately, I realize now that I should have said URL *modification* to bit.ly URLs, tinyurl URLs, etc. to be more clear about what I meant.

(I *am* also somewhat annoyed by the visual shortening of URLs into http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... and such, but less so because the original long URL is still intact in Twitter's database and exposed via search.)

If I have the characters to spare, I prefer long URLs in my tweets because I like to know what I'm clicking on. Perhaps Twitter can introduce a preference like "Don't modify my tweets at all. Use the exact characters I typed."

Keep up the good work with the podcast. If you find any more information about this URL issue, this thread is probably the best place to post it.

Phil

Do you use Firefox, Phil? If so, try out this Greasemonkey script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/3...

Please leave URLs alone if the entire tweet fits in 140 characters. An excellent case for this is made at http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2008...

Link modification creates usability issues, and as such should not really happen.
Good URL's can entice a user to select a link and decide if the link could prove to be beneficial to them.
By modifying these links, you are destroying what the internet was intended for.
Free distribution of information as a whole of which all are entitled to view and share (copyrights and the such all of course being adhered to). =)

The internet in it's natural form was built on the fact that pages link to one another.
Yes people/companies can and do manipulate the system.

But then modifying how the link is displayed and the fact the linked to page receives no link juice, isn't that manipulation?

escapingchris

LEAVE IT TO USERS' CHOICE! DON'T EDIT MY TWEETS IF THEY'RE UNDER 140 LIMIT!

I own some top level single name domains (e.g name.com or another.org) and want my links to remain as them (part of what I PAY FOR) not some "bit.ly" address!

I am not some spammer, these are my real, developed domains with an audience receiving re-tweets through my main page in one case. I wan't people to see it's a link to my real site, not some spam!

And I'm pretty sure this didn't use to be the case for my sites, and that I had posted some in the past that were left alone (the ellipses of course) because the message did not exceed 140. this is something that I think just began happening on my account (it looks like from previous posts this was a problem then discontinued for some time and now is back)).

why not have a setting for "allow url modification" (and a choice on company to do so) or "NOT"?

it's almost like there's some kickback to twitter for forcing us through these redirects?

p.s. this whole "getsatisfaction" thing isn't so great either. I would prefer staying ON twitter for help and not having to add cookie allowances and give my email address to anyone else just to get this "help"!