Twitter recently announced that they will soon begin to pass all shared links through their own URL shortener. This would apply to any link posted using the web interface or through third party applications such as Tweetdeck.
In the near future, when you share a personalized link, it will be wrapped in Twitter’s shortener (http://t.co) instead of whatever format the original link was in. This shortened link Twitter creates will 301 redirect to the original link.
This probably won’t make a difference for most people, but for those of us who use our own personalized URL shorteners this will make a huge difference.
I have and use my own URL shortener. Many of you may have noticed this from some of the links I’ve shared on Twitter. For example, when I shared the link to the recent post on “Dwight Schrute’s Secret To Better Blogging” I used my own URL shortener to shrink the link to http://robmcguire.net/dsbb. Having a personalized URL shortener has made sharing links much more manageable and brandable.
Twitter’s new feature is going to take away the benefits you gain from personalized URL shorteners. When most of the links you see through Twitter all start with the same prefix then individuality will suffer a little. People who use their own personalized URL shortener as part of their marketing efforts are going to lose out in that aspect.
According to the rest of Twitter’s announcement, it looks like bigger companies such as Amazon.com will keep their links somewhat intact, but I don’t see the same happening for the little guy.
What are your thoughts on Twitter’s new link policy? If you use your own personalized URL shortener how is this going to change how you use it?