Twitter has been using TinyURL for its own URL shortening needs. Up until now, that is. As several sites have noticed, Twitter has silently replaced TinyURL with bit.ly. TechCrunch doesn’t find that very surprising, naming Betaworks as common ground for both bit.ly and now Twitter-owned Summize.
Will Twitter buy bit.ly next? They should, the fact that they’ve been relying on external infrastructure for their URL shortening needs this long is surprising.
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As much as anything else, it’s a shorter domain name.
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It would be smart for Twitter to buy bit.ly even if it was just for security reasons. Twitter could expand these shortened URLs for everyone except SMS users. This way users would continue to stick to the 140 character limit but would have much more information when clicking links in other users tweets.
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We’re new, and not included in the article but we think our URL shortening service http://zi.pe brings a lot of value into the short URL market.
We not only shorten links, but also text, email addresses, and a photos (with upload then shortening).
People get a bad taste in their mouths for short url services because they are still using the original old school ones that have little to no value.
Bit.ly and TinyUrl are both out-dated and their url’s are too long. One character can make or break a great twitter post…
Give us a try :D
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I’ve said that least 3170126 times. The problem this like that is they are just too compilcated for the average bird, if you know what I mean
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Thank you for your thoughtful post!
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The new Zune browser is surprisingly good, but not as good as the iPod’s. It works well, but isn’t as fast as Safari, and has a clunkier interface. If you occasionally plan on using the web browser that’s not an issue, but if you’re planning to browse the web alot from your PMP then the iPod’s larger screen and better browser may be important.