Tag Archives | Twitter

Twitter, It’s Time to Fix Short URLs Once and For All

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 25, 2009 at 12:26 pm

It’s not a gross exaggeration to say that without short URLs from services such as Bit.ly and TinyURL, Twitter might not have become the sensation that it is. They enable the sharing of interesting links and photos and generally let the service transcend its 140-character limit. But they also bring some major gotchas, such as the possibility of your links breaking if the short URL provider goes out of business or simply loses interest.

Another basic problem with short URLs: They can be dangerous. The very idea behind them is that they’re short (and therefore cryptic) but can redirect you to any URL. But the URLs they redirect to can send you to malware-infested sites–and since you see the short URL rather than the real one, you don’t have the opportunity to inspect the address for tell-tale signs that it’s risky.

Security software kingpin Symantec is understandably interested in short-URL security, and produced this video showing some sleazy ones on Twitter:

If you can see the real URL before you click, there’s a very good chance you’ll figure out it’s not something you want to visit. Which is part of why many third-party Twitter apps (such as Seesmic) let you preview the true URL. Weirdly, Twitter itself only provides this capability in its search.twitter.com feature, via “expand” links (which don’t appear next to all short URLs–you don’t get them with Digg links, for instance).

Seems to me that it would be fairly simple for Twitter to make short URLs a whole lot more useful and a whole lot less insecure. Here, I’ll map out a course of action:

1) Twitter should launch its own URL-shortening feature*. (Currently, it uses Bit.ly as its default service.) It’ll tick off every third-party shortener and probably drive most of them out of business, but the benefits to Twitter users will ultimately be worth it. If Twitter itself controls the short URLs, they’ll work for as long as there’s a Twitter, and the company will gain the ability to make them better than existing ones.

2) It should institute a short-URL expansion feature throughout the site–and instead of making you click an “expand” link, it should autoexpand them so the short link never appears. If users need to take the extra step of clicking to see the real link, they may or may not bother–but if the real one is staring them in the face, many questionable URLs will be manifestly obvious. (And some scammers probably won’t even bother to try and do their dirty work via Twitter.)

3) It should put the real URLs that short URLs point to through a malware-detection feature along the lines of ones that are now standard in Web browsers. If a real URL looks suspicious, Twitter shouldn’t permit it to be turned into a short URL in the first place. (Again, doing this should not only foil malware links that do get through, but should discourage scammers from bothering in the first place.)

*If Twitter is really worried about destroying third-party URL shorteners, it could accomplish most of the above without launching its own service, by launching an API (with malware detection and other enhancements) that other URL shortener can take advantage of. Even if it does create its own service, it needs an API so that third-party Twitter clients can bring all of its goodness to their users.

The above game plan would require some time and money, but if Twitter’s ambition is to be the pulse of the planet, it’s going to be responsible for taking actions that make it harder for the bad guys to screw things up for the good guys. And if the company really has a hundred million bucks to play with, it should throw a little of the dough towards solving this problem once and for all.

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AIM Gets More Social

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 15, 2009 at 12:38 pm

I use AOL’s instant-messaging network all day long, but I’m not sure when I last used the AIM software itself (with the exception of the iPhone version). I’ve associated it with feature bloat, annoying ads, and a sort of old-timy, Web 1.0 feel. So I long ago switched to other clients that support the AIM network (Apple’s iChat when I’m on a Mac, GAIM when I’m on Windows, and the Web-based Meebo anywhere and everywhere).

But AOL showed off new desktop and iPhone versions of AIM this morning at TechCrunch50. The new AIM is distinctly less clunky and annoying, and it aims to be not only an IM client but also an aggregator of social networking info (aka your “lifestream”) from other services, too. The new versions officially launch next week, but betas for Windows and Mac are available right now and the $2.99 paid iPhone version is live on the App Store.

I’m trying the Mac beta, and it’s a Mac AIM client I’d actually use (hey, I’m chatting in another window even as we speak). It seems to lack some of the irritations that drove me away long ago, like ads popping up without warning. As for the social networking features, AOL has added support for Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Fickr, Twitter, and YouTube. It combines them all in a tab called Lifestream, lets you view all of them in one river of updates, or one service at a time, and permits you to broadcast your AIM status to other services whenever you update it. It also displays photos and videos from your pals directly in the AIM window.

There aren’t many things harder to do than elegant integration of disparate social networks–actually, I’m not sure if anyone’s really nailed it yet–and AIM’s implementation, in this beta at least, is imperfect. I’m not sure why you configure networks in your browser rather than in AIM preferences, for instance. And if you’re the type who loves high-powered apps like TweetDeck and Seesmic, you’ll find the AIM client’s support for other networks to be bare-bones at best. I doubt that any semi-serious Twitter user will rely on AIM as his or her only Twitter client, and about 95% of the things that make Facebook interesting (the full-blown wall, events, third-party apps, etc.) aren’t available.

The new AIM makes most sense for folks whose social lives are centered around AIM rather than Twitter or Facebook or another network. There are millions of those people, so it’ll be accomplishing something if all it does is make them happy. As it will be if you can use the new clients without gnashing your teeth and seeking alternative clients less likely to drive you bonkers.

I’m still looking for the ideal social-networking aggregator, but so many companies are working so hard on the challenge that I’m optimistic that I’ll find one that works for me sooner or later.

As for the new AIM client for the iPhone, I’ve downloaded and installed it–but every time I try to view my Lifestream, I get an error. I’ll check back later.

AIM network users, are you still using the AIM client? If not, why not? If you try the new versions, let us know what you think.

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You Own Your Tweets … But So Does Twitter?

Posted by Jared Newman on September 11, 2009 at 6:57 pm

Reading about changes to a site’s terms of service is a lot like hearing someone say, “We have to talk.” It’s never a good sign.

So, despite the calm way in which Twitter’s Biz Stone described the site’s updated terms of service, I’m raising skeptical eyebrow. We’ve heard a lot today about the new terms’ advertising possibilities, but I’m more alarmed by the declarations of what Twitter can do with your content.

Stone notes that “your tweets belong to you, and not to Twitter.” At the same time, Twitter is allowed to “use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).”

After all that, what ownership do I have that Twitter doesn’t?

Let’s make an analogy. Say I write a sentence on a piece of paper. They’re my words, on my paper, plain and simple. But let’s say the paper company had declared that it can take those words and use them as it pleases, because they were written on the company’s paper. Can I still say that I’m the owner of those words?

The justification for Twitter’s reproduction rights is, simply, “that’s what we do.” Not good enough.

Twitter’s terms look a lot like the ones that got Facebook into hot water earlier this year. They’re not word-for-word the same, but you see a lot of similar language: use, copy, scan, reformat, modify, edit.

Not surprisingly, Twitter moved to pre-empt the backlash that Facebook faced by saying that “your tweets belong to you.” (Facebook said it in reverse: “We are not claiming and have never claimed ownership of material that users upload.”)

We’re talking semantics here. The bigger problem is the blanket claims these social networking sites are making on users’ content. I appreciate that Twitter’s terms of service are brief and readable, but I’d rather the site spell out exactly how and where it intends to use people’s tweets, so we’re all on the same page.

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