Sadness. Google May Have Just Killed TwitterFeed (And Bit.ly Too)

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twifeedgoog

Update: Corrected Title.

Love them or hate them, whenever the Google Gorilla jumps into the web pond, they are bound to make waves (drowning out rivals big and small).

Not too long ago, Google announced that FeedBurner (a service they bought a few years ago) has launched the ability for bloggers to tweet their feed links directly to Twitter using Google’s new URL shortener, goo.gl (hat tip: TechCrunch)

(Google AdSense for Feeds) Many of our publishers who have tried our Google Analytics feed item link integration have already noticed that their most popular feed items have been shared many times on Twitter.

We’re now taking our distribution and analytics a step further by enabling the ability to automatically publish the feed items that meet your criteria to Twitter, using the Google URL shortener at goo.gl.

Despite being a Google fanboy, I am saddened by this move as it certainly means the death of Twitterfeed, one of my favorite tools outside of world known as Google. [Read more…]

TinyURL’s Out, bit.ly’s In

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Twitter has been using TinyURL for its own URL shortening needs. Up until now, that is. As several sites have noticed, Twitter has silently replaced TinyURL with bit.ly. TechCrunch doesn’t find that very surprising, naming Betaworks as common ground for both bit.ly and now Twitter-owned Summize.

Will Twitter buy bit.ly next? They should, the fact that they’ve been relying on external infrastructure for their URL shortening needs this long is surprising.

Exploring Social Media: Shortening Those Links

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Exploring Social Media article series badgeAs I continue to explore social media and social media tools, I find myself relying more and more on URL short aliases like those produced by TinyURL. Long URL addresses are shrunk down to 8-14 characters. We’re growing more and more dependent upon information reduced to 140 characters in a world still ruled by the power of the link, and desperately seeking a way to squeeze down a long URL into as few characters as possible is a growing and competitive web app industry.

The need to reduce the URL on social media networks is similar to the need to compress down file sizes for transfer and backups in the earliest days of computers. WinZip, PKZIP, WinRAR, StuffIt, and others allowed us to shrink down a file to fit onto a small floppy disk, and continue to allow us backup, share, and transport large files in tiny boxes. It took a while, but soon Microsoft and Apple realized that file compression was essential and today, their operating systems include file compression.

Just as we needed to shrink our files, we now have to shrink our links. While not currently integrated into software and web apps, the day is coming when URL short aliases are coming to a web app near you. Right now, you have to settle for third-party integration. [Read more…]