Twitter's t.co - URL Shortener OneCent.US Says "Not Scared."

July 20, 2010 - PRLog -- Newcomer URL Shortener OneCent.US, is not shaking in its boots at about  what Twitter's t.co "link service" will do to their plans.

"We welcome t.co into our life with open arms. Today we're announcing a new feature which will just further enhance our position and growth in the URL shortener marketplace," said Bill Purkins, OneCent.US founder.

The site is unveiling an ability to categorize shortened URLs for appearance on  their soon to be launched real time news and other topical pages, with categories of News, Sports, Technology, Health, Entertainment, Politics, Lifestyles and Other.

The site's home page now has radio buttons to select a category for your link and a message saying:

"Give your link LEGS! Categorize and let the WORLD follow and comment on it on our coming news
pages!"

The attempt is to become a go to real time news source that features the links users are shouting out about, and give visitors the ability to see by category how many times the links have been visited by popularity.

"We're trying to tell people what's capturing the attention of their Twitter followers," explained Purkins. “The potential is lofty. We're very hopeful”

"We also think though it sort of overlaps with Twitter's mysterious 'Resonance algorithm,' which they make a big point of when it comes to what t.co is all about.

Let's look at the apparent t.co mission from their home page to try to see how:

"Twitter uses the t.co domain as part of a service to protect users from harmful activity, to provide value for the developer ecosystem, and as a quality signal for surfacing relevant, interesting Tweets." (t.co home page")

Not just another URL shortener, t.co is going to change the way links are displayed on the popular site. In SMS messages, they will be wrapped in a t.co link and it is understood that t.co links will always be 20 characters. That gives them 8 characters to work with in base 36 or 62 arithmetic. That's a lot of links, folks.

In base 36, that's up to 2,821,109,907,456 possible links. Over two trillion.

In base 62? 218,340,105,584,896. Two hundred eighteen trillion.

Now, if printed out at 2.5 inches each, about how long 20 characters in the default font in Notepad, that's 545+ trillion inches, or 45+ trillion feet, 8+ billion miles, which would wrap around the Earth more than 364,483 times.

If it took 1 second to click each link, that nearly 7 million years to visit them all. Daunting task.

The t.co site says:

"Our link service will also be used to measure information like how many times a link has been clicked.”

Count clicks? Someone out there doesn't?

"Eventually, this information will become an important quality signal for our Resonance algorithm—the way we determine if a Tweet is relevant and interesting."

Uh oh. New buzzword.

Twitter introduces the "Resonance algorithm" concept as a bit mysterious. Their site attempts to ask and answer:

"What's the algorithm for Resonance? ... We are keeping it secret to prevent gaming. But, we will
say that Resonance is a metric that measures how well a company's Tweets are resonating with
users and helps determine which Tweets get displayed as Promoted Tweets and which don't."
(support.twitter.com/articles/142161-advertisers)

Gaming? They don't want people betting which Tweets get "promoted?" Whoever pays, no? Isn't that how advertising works? Or will Twitter be deciding whether or not to accept an ad if their "Resonance algorithm" doesn't say we should be interested in it? Apparently. Not good.

Bottom line, Twitter monetizes the site. Finally. Advertising. Some Tweets will be "Promoted."  

"Promoted" means "advertised." That means money. Lots of it.

Nothing new here. It's Twitter's ball and they own the playing field as well.

What it means to URL shorteners? Twitter says you can continue to use your favorite URL shortener but,

"... Eventually all links on Twitter will be wrapped." -
(webpronews.com/topnews/2010/06/09/twitter-to-package-links-its-own-way-for-security-a
nalytics-and-promoted-tweet-me)

In other words, when you Tweet, even if you use bit.ly or TinyURL.com or OneCent.US or whatever, Twitter wraps that with the t.co brand in SMS messages and on Twitter itself you will see something more more suggestive of the ultimate destination URL, good for users, but a heavy blow to URL shorteners as they will lose visibility.

However, t.co "... is not available as a general shortening service..." so,  the URL shorteners do not go away.”

Again, "promoted Tweets?"

"… organic, timely, and must resonate with users—they deliver a positive experience not only for users and advertisers, but also for developers who will receive 50/50 revenue share." (support.twitter.com/articles/142161-advertisers)

Again, they must "resonate."

Resonate? Sounds to us like Twitter is really going to ring some chimes with this one, but we think there's still a place for us.

OneCent.US owner Bill Purkins is computer programmer who for years wrote operations and logistics software for Fortune 500 International divisions. He served on IBM's Toronto Language Lab Customer Advisory Council to evaluate and consult on the development of the rpg/ILE programming language used on the AS/400 computer, (aka i-series server).  

He has developed web applications since 1998, and today owns an SEO copy writing agency that does about a million words a year in SEO articles and content for web sites. He also owns URL Shortener service http://OneCent.US which he calls the dot US American alternative to foreign domain extensions such as .co and .ly,  Columbia and US respectively. The site also donates 90% of its advertising revenue to charity.