Twitter announced tonight that it will extending it’s linking service currently used with direct messages to all Twitter users later this summer.
A quick summary of the blog post:
- All links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL by the end of the summer.
- User safety/security is a key driver behind the feature – it will help Twitter weed out spam and remove the obfusication caused by shortened URLs.
- Advertising is the REAL driver behind the feature. The data extracted from the URL redirects will feed key metrics to Twitter’s advertising platform.
- The article mentions in passing that they’ll build services around the data such as “analytics within our eventual commercial accounts service”.
Our thoughts:
First of all – the new feature isn’t actually a shortener. It is a wrapper – see here and here. Further clarification below…
Long and short – an obvious move for Twitter considering that Facebook and Google already more or less do the same thing. You can see for yourself the next time you click a link in a Google result. You click on the actual URL, but when you click you first get redirected through Google and then Google forwards you to the original destination. Of course Google counts the click (and more) and uses the data (and much more!) to determine the URLs search relevancy.
Going forward, Twitter will do the same thing when you click a link through their platform. This will include links in 3rd party apps like Tweetdeck, by the way. Any click that happens in Twitter – regardless of medium – will pass through t.co on it’s journey.
Besides delivering advertising metrics, Twitter’s link redirection effort is also a big step towards buidling their own “PageRank”. In Twitter’s case, they’ll use a host of inputs – including URL redirects – to stoke its Resonance algorithm – which Twitter uses to determine if a Tweet is relevant/interesting and will also (somehow) use to tune its forthcoming Promoted Tweets feature.
At least that’s how it looks to me.
As far as how this will affect Argyle links – it won’t. Twitter will still show the original URL that you shared and it will still redirect through the original source – so all of your tracking data, web analytics parameters, conversion tracking, and everything else will be the same. Plus, we’ve already started poking around the developer preview to make sure that we’re ahead of the game…
The commercial accounts bit is obviously very interesting to Argyle. Facebook and YouTube have both set a pretty high bar for platform analytics. We would LOVE to see Twitter launch a comparable offering.
If you’re really brave, you can sort through the conversation on the Twitter Developers forum. Big ups to Twitter on a smart move and for doing so in such an open, transparent fashion.