Twitter's New Tweet Button is Going to Lead to Broken Links

I tweeted my last post using the Tweet Button.

Here's what it looks like on twitter:



When you mouse over the link, you'll see that it's actually a link to a shortened URL: http://t.co/QzpVyGb

If people retweet this post using the twitter's retweet function, the link will not break.

But, if people copy and paste the tweet, the link will break.

Like this:

Free Contact Cards from Kodak Gallery offonatangent.blogspot.com/2010/08/free-c… cc @KodakCB

The shortened link should be displayed in the tweet with something like a tool tip to display the full URL when you hover your mouse over the shortened link.

We're going to see lots of broken links on twitter.

Update 8/13/10:

Looks like twitter changed the display on the tweet, changing the URL to the shortened URL.

Free Contact Cards from Kodak Gallery http://t.co/QzpVyGb cc @KodakCBThu Aug 12 21:42:28 via Tweet ButtonSteve Garfield
stevegarfield

That's the same tweet as above, but now it has the shortened URL in it.

If they've changed to displaying the shortened URL everywhere, that's a good thing.

I'll keep an eye out.