bit.ly and Link Wrapping
Following this week’s OAuth and apps announcements, some of our users have inquired about how bit.ly will work with Twitter’s new link-wrapping service. Link-wrapping will enable Twitter to collect traffic data and block spam, but it will not interfere with bit.ly analytics, bit.ly Pro custom domains, or bit.ly Enterprise usage — you will be able to shorten, share and track links with bit.ly exactly as you do now.
Many of our partners are already using their bit.ly Pro short links with t.co, since all links shared via the Twitter Tweet Button have been wrapped in t.co since the button launched last month.
Link-wrapping will happen automatically and invisibly in the background. For example, if you share the long URL for NPR’s “Take Five” Jazz Sampler (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90379427&sc=tw&cc=share) directly via the Tweet Button, the resulting tweet will look like this:
Though the link shown is automatically passed through t.co, it is displayed here as a truncated version of the underlying long URL. Note that the link as it is displayed here is not, itself, a valid and functioning URL — copying and pasting “npr.org/templates/stor…” will result in a 404 error, and the long URL itself may not display consistently across different Twitter clients.
bit.ly Pro links integrate easily with link-wrapping. Our friends at NPR are currently using their bit.ly Pro short links with t.co and the Twitter Tweet Button, so a link shared via the Tweet Button at NPR currently looks like this:
The link shown here is also automatically passed through t.co, but the underlying bit.ly Pro (in this case, n.pr) link is displayed. This link is complete and functional as shown, and can be easily copied and pasted (and appended with a + for instant realtime metrics: http://n.pr/c0ujwA+).
We are working closely with Twitter and many other social media platforms to continually improve our service across the web — for more information about sharing bit.ly and bit.ly Pro short links to many such platforms, please visit our guide to third party tools for publishers.
2 years ago