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Saturday, August 22, 2009

Twitter Breaks Links

Why does twitter shorten the link on posts where link doesn't need to be shortened?



I used bit.ly to make a decriptive link, and twitter changed it from http://bit.ly/BlameDrewDatehMusic to http://bit.ly/BlameDrewDate....

The link still works when you are on twitter, but when someone copies the link manually and then retweets it, the link breaks.

Details:

Twitter changed the link on my post, from this:

Blame Drew's Cancer: The Music Video by Paul Dateh http://bit.ly/BlameDrewDatehMusic #blamedrewscancer


To this:

Blame Drew's Cancer: The Music Video by Paul Dateh http://bit.ly/BlameDrewDate... #blamedrewscancer


On twitter, the link works, until someone retweets it, by copying and pasting the tweet into a new post, then it breaks.

Broken link:

melissapierce RT @stevegarfield: Blame Drew's Cancer: The Music Video by Paul Dateh http://bit.ly/BlameDrewDate.. #blamedrewscancer i know amazing ppl


I blame Drews Cancer

Update:

Example #2:

Original post:
stevegarfield#blamedrewscancer Music Video http://bit.ly/BlameDrewDatehMusic


Twitter shortened:
stevegarfield#blamedrewscancer Music Video http://bit.ly/BlameDrewDate...


Note: This shortend link works at twitter.com, but will break if someone manually copies and pastes it to retweet it.

Example #3:
Original post:
stevegarfield#blamedrewscancer Music Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHDiurJY3lg


Twitter shortened:
stevegarfield#blamedrewscancer Music Video http://bit.ly/nSFfW
I don't understand why twitter feels the need to shorten that YouTube link. and note the shortened URL, nSFfW. Weird.

I know twitter is working on incorporating the retweet function. I hope they makes things better and not worse. I also hope that when retweeting, we'll be able to add editorial comments to retweets.