Links and Twitter: Length Shouldn't Matter
Since early March, we have been routing links within Direct Messages through our link service to detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of malware, phishing, and other dangers. Any link shared in a Direct Message has been wrapped with a twt.tl URL.
Context & Ripple Effects
Twitter's March 2010 trust-and-safety post established the template: every Direct Message link gets routed through its own twt.tl wrapper so malware and phishing attempts can be intercepted before delivery. This post extends that argument beyond safety into product philosophy — with the service doing the wrapping, the 140-character budget no longer needs to accommodate long raw URLs.
The move lands on territory Bit.ly has been working since its July 2009 launch of malicious-link warnings, and VentureBeat's pickup frames it exactly that way: Twitter scaling its own shortener as a direct challenge. After kottke's 2009 complaint about link 'litter' cluttering timelines, a platform-controlled link layer is also Twitter's answer to the messiness of third-party shortening.
First-order effects
- Third-party shorteners — Bit.ly above all — lose their default position in the tweet pipeline as Twitter wraps links itself, taking redirect traffic and the click data that comes with it in-house.
- Users get automatic malware and phishing screening on shared links, but per Tweet Smarter's reaction, wrapped URLs consume more characters than the originals they replace.
Second-order effects
- Bit.ly and rival shorteners are forced to compete on analytics and enterprise features rather than on simply being where Twitter links flow, since the platform can reroute that flow at will.
- Client developers and publishers building on the timeline have to handle an intermediary URL layer they don't control, changing how click-throughs are measured and attributed.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platforms absorb infrastructure layers previously left to startups — shortening, security screening, eventually the whole link experience — consolidating the data and pricing power of link distribution inside the platform rather than across an ecosystem of middleware vendors.
The trend: Social platforms are internalizing the link-infrastructure layer — shortening and security — that third-party services built, trading an open middleware market for platform-controlled distribution.