The days are gone when we have to source external methods of shortening our URLS so we can squeeze in everything that we want to say. Keeping our thoughts and feelings to 140 characters isn’t always easy especially when we want to write something catchy and meaningful to grab the attention of our audience.
Luckily, URL shortening tools came to the rescue with a way for us to shorten those dreaded, long-winded slugs, giving us more room to chirp on about our favourite things. With more space to ramble on, these URL shorteners became essential social media tools to both private users and online marketers.
Traffic Analysis with Twitter’s New URL Shortener
t.co is Twitter’s brand spanking new service for Tweeters who don’t want the inconvenience of turning to an external site when they want to share a great article they’ve read or a brand new product they’ve seen. The most popular external shorteners are sites such as Tinyurl.com, Bit.ly, Nowtweet.it and Ow.ly – but we can now leave those behind and simply let Twitter do all the work.
While some of these existing external tools can offer an overview of clicks and a basic analytics facility, the new t.co will make its own appearance in your Google Analytics account (coming from the referring URL http://t.co) so you can have accurate data collection for your traffic sources.
A Safer and Easier Way to Tweet
Not only can t.co link to your Google Analytics, but the new service also protects you from malicious sites which could put your computer at risk from malware, phishing and other harmful internet attacks. Every time a link is shortened through the new URL service, it is checked against a long list of potentially harmful websites.
Twitter users will be warned with a message before proceeding if sites appear dangerous in any way:
So hooray to Twitter’s new link shortening service, and a pat on the back for ensuring maximum safety for PCs all over the world!