twitter rolls out tee dot cee oh

Three days ago I posited that shortened URLs are too fragile (i.e., potential perishable) to use for communications other than Twitter, where the character limit makes the abbreviation a necessity. Turns out Twitter was already workin' on it ...

Today Twitter sent out an email to users advising of two changes. The first is that external apps must now use OAuth to access Twitter on your behalf. This is a welcome move, since it means that servers hosting your online apps will no longer be storing your Twitter password.

The second change is very welcome in the world of URL durability:

Update 2: t.co URL wrapping

In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link. Wrapped links are displayed in a way that is easier to read, with the actual domain and part of the URL showing, so that you know what you are clicking on. When you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service to check if the destination site is known to contain malware, and we then will forward you on to the destination URL. All of that should happen in an instant.

You will start seeing these links on certain accounts that have opted-in to the service; we expect to roll this out to all users by the end of the year. When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL.

What does this mean for me?

• A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title.
• You will start seeing links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened links and lets you know where each link will take you.
• When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time.

This new feature will solve another problem with shortened URLs that I failed to mention in my previous post: Now you will know what the hell you are clicking on, and known malware pages will be blocked. Kudos on that point, Twitter.

The prospect of Twitter logging the URLs you click on, though, brings up serious privacy issues. This bears careful watching and analysis of the privacy policy that comes along with the new services.