the rompe blog

Up to now, every time I decided to look into using Twitter I was quickly annoyed by all those people posting shortened URLs, giving no hint about what server you will be redirected to after clicking the link. Being a person who looks at every URL before clicking it, I got bored by having to install tools to verify those URLs, and came to the conclusion that Twitter just sucks. I always thought: "Is it so hard to extend the 140 character limit just for URLs?"

Seems like Twitter finally read my thoughts. From their newsletter:

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.

The time they are activating this change will be the time I start twittering. What a pity that it is Twitter who is implementing this and not Status.net, but hey, at least someone had the brainwave.