Twitter will roll out a link shortener service coming summer: t.co .
Twitter will automatically shorten, or, as it says, “wrap” all links automatically, whether you are tweeting from the company’s website, or using a third-party client.
When this is rolled out more broadly to users this summer, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL. A really long link such as http://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-v2-a-tweak-ui-for-windows-7-vista might be wrapped as http://t.co/UWT for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as thewindowsclub.com/ultimate – or as the whole URL or page title. Ultimately, we want to display links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened link and lets you know where a link will take you.
If you are already partial to a particular shortener when you tweet, you can continue to use it for link shortening and analytics as you normally would, and we’ll wrap the shortened links you submit.
The move would be terrible news for third-party url shorteners, I suppose!