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Why Twitter's T.co Is a Game Changer

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the everyone-wants-a-piece-of-that dept.

macslocum writes "If Twitter is so inclined, the company could turn the new t.co shortening service into a powerful analytics tool that solves the marketing and tracking issues of off-site engagement."

11 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. *shrug* by garcia · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From the article:

    This is why short URLs are so important. URLs survive the share. Because the interested reader is forced to go to the URL shortener to map the short URL to the real one, whoever owns the shortener sees the engagement between the audience and the content, no matter where it happens. That's why URLs are the new cookies.

    As long as you keep the URL shortened and are sharing it on Twitter. What about when you cross those boundaries and share on Facebook (which is the biggest social network) or e-mail or chat or whatever? Once you take the ball out of Twitter's court the analytics become useless from t.co--just like any other URL shortener.

    This is a non-issue for the privacy geeks as they'll just share the original URL and not do it via Twitter.

    Honestly, Twitter traffic is fairly useless for anyone as the visitors tend to be one-time flybys who spend less than a few seconds on your endsite and just end up lowering your time on site and raising your bounce metrics. If you want engagement you better be using some other network to get your funnel working the way you want.

    1. Re:*shrug* by mcgrew · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I never click on a shortened link. You never know when it migh be a redirect to goatse.cx or worse.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    2. Re:*shrug* by thijsh · · Score: 4, Funny

      I dare you to click (NSFA): http://bit.ly/4ieaw :-)

    3. Re:*shrug* by Xacid · · Score: 3, Funny

      Win. I personally hate them. So much that I feel like posting this even though I know it adds no value.

  2. Re:Just what we need by 0123456 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    On the plus side, if all marketers are using the same domain for tracking URLs, then it only takes one line in /etc/hosts to block them all.

    And am I the only one who just does not click on any 'shortened' URL because you never know what it's going to take you to? OK, so www.fluffybunnies.com could still take me to a goatse site, but it's far less likely to do so.

  3. Identica by Compaqt · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is probably a good time to mention the Linuxy, freeish, openish alternative to Twitter:

    http://identi.ca/

    And if you don't like Identi.ca, create your own microblogging system with StatusNet:

    http://status.net/

    --
    I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
  4. Re:Just what we need by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And am I the only one who just does not click on any 'shortened' URL

    You aren't the only one. I won't click on them either. I probably wouldn't go to your fluffybunnies url either and tend to stick to just the few I have 'whitelisted' in my brain. A certain citrus celebration themed URL comes to mind when discussing URLs that sound safe on paper...

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  5. Re:More importantly... by corbettw · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think it's pronounced "Throatwarbler Mangrove".

    --
    God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
  6. Re:Just what we need by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I dislike unnecessarily shortened URLs. It's like people who will abbreviate every word they can in a text message when they're not sending anything near the limit. (Or worse, in contexts where there are no such limits.) Now there are programs for tweeters that will automatically shorten every embedded URL this way. I'd much rather they only shorten them when needed.

    Meanwhile news sites should be paying attention to which stories get more traffic and proactively provide their own short paths to the story for purposes of tweeting.

    And if Twitter wanted control over shortening services, they should just adopt their own syntax for it. "^code" could be remapped in their own database to hyperlink on display, mouse-over could still expand before following, and would take far less space than "http://T.co/code". And they still could do it through a redirection URL so they can track click-through like FARK.com does, using scripting to rewrite the status bar to hide the full redirection URL.

    Unless they really want to track the sharing of the links off-site, just to have the most information possible. (And the Referer [sic] header handles differentiation there.) Then they could combine it all: ^code in sight maps to http://t.co/code cite which redirects to site, with mouse-over showing full site's URL cite to user's sight, but copying the link and pasting gets the tico code cite.

    --
    Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  7. Re:Just what we need by GrumblyStuff · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not only that, any links via URL shorteners are rendered useless if the service goes down.

  8. Un-bit.ly links by InvisiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

    Check out the Browser Extensions section of http://bit.ly/pages/tools for an addon that will show you the unobfuscated links. As an example, here's a bit.ly link for my site: http://bit.ly/bHnUhd

    I would expect similar tools to pop up for any URL shortening service that becomes decently popular.