Downloader: Twitter changes from 140 to 120 characters (sort of), and launches a URL shortener

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Twitter changes from 140 to 120 characters (sort of), and launches a URL shortener

Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Microblogging

Twitter is famous for its quick 140-character bursts of information, but the new target number might be 120 characters, plus links. In a new post on the official Twitter blog, Twitter's Sean Garrett outlines the company's new philosophy that links shouldn't count against the character limit. To make that happen, Twitter's launching its own URL shortener, t.co, that will automatically be applied to every link sent out via SMS.

When you read Twitter in your favorite Twitter client or on the web, though, long links will be truncated at 20 characters, instead of being replaced with a t.co link. That way, you have a chance of actually understanding what you're clicking on without using a service that translates those mystifying shortened URLs. Mashable is saying that t.co links will always be 20 characters, effectively setting Twitter's character limit to 120 for tweets with URLs. So, I guess links WILL count against the character limit, but in a very predictable way.

The big loser in all of this would seem to be Bit.ly, Twitter's official url-shortening partner. It looks like Bit.ly's services won't be needed anymore, although it's certainly not clear whether t.co can provide the same traffic stats and analytics Bit.ly users have been enjoying. This seems like the latest move in Twitter's pattern of replacing popular third-party services with its own internal versions: first mobile clients, then ads, and now shorteners. What's next?