> > What's the algorithm for the display url? Ideally it will be a > predictable length, to aid predictability in tweet display code. >
i'm not sure why the display_url would be of predictable length? the display_url is -exactly- the URL that the user has sent into the system. so, that may be of varying length. > If the motive is really to protect us from malicious URLs, what about > giving a service we can call to route links through your protective > redirect servers? Then we can give users the option to be protected by > your malicious detection algorithms if they want. > If you want to click track every URL for whatever reason, ask client > developers to hit a ping URL if the user clicks? I'm not sure > otherwise how you will tell in a software client if it's the user > requesting the t.co URL or the software. > i guess i'm confused on this as well? isn't that what t.co does? > > On Jun 9, 6:57 am, Raffi Krikorian <ra...@twitter.com> wrote: > > hi all. > > > > twitter has been wrapping links in e-mailed DMs for a couple months > > now<http://bit.ly/twttldmemail>. > > with that feature, we're trying to protect users against phishing and > other > > malicious attacks. the way that we're doing this is that any URL that > comes > > through in a DM gets currently wrapped with a twt.tl URL -- if the URL > turns > > out to be malicious, Twitter can simply shut it down, and whoever follows > > that link will be presented with a page that warns them of potentially > > malicious content. in a few weeks, we're going to start slowly enabling > this > > throughout the API for all statuses as well, but instead of twt.tl, we > will > > be using t.co. > > > > practically, any tweet that is sent through statuses/update that has a > link > > on it will have the link automatically converted to a t.co link on its > way > > through the Twitter platform. if you fetch any tweet created after this > > change goes live, then its text field will have all its links > automatically > > wrapped with t.co links. when a user clicks on that link, Twitter will > > redirect them to the original URL after first confirming with our > database > > that that URL is not malicious. on top of the end-user benefit, we hope > to > > eventually provide all developers with aggregate usage data around your > > applications such as the number of clicks people make on URLs you display > > (it will, of course, be in aggregate and not identifiable manner). > > additionally, we want to be able to build services and APIs that can make > > algorithmic recommendations to users based on the content they are > > consuming. gathering the data from t.co will help make these possible. > > > > our current plan is that no user will see a t.co URL on twitter.com but > we > > still have some details to work through. the links will still be > displayed > > as they were sent in, but the target of the link will be the t.co link > > instead. and, we want to provide the same ability to display original > links > > to developers. we're going to use the entities attribute to make this > > possible. > > > > let's say i send out the following tweet: "you have to check outhttp:// > dev.twitter.com!" > > > > a returned (and truncated) status object may look like: > > > > { > > "text" : "you have to check outhttp://t.co/s9gfk2d4!";, > > ... > > "user" : { > > "screen_name" : "raffi", > > ... > > }, > > ... > > "entities" : { > > "urls" : [ > > { > > "url" : "http://t.co/s9gfk2d4";, > > "display_url" : "http://dev.twitter.com";, > > "indices" : [23, 43] > > } > > ], > > ... > > }, > > ... > > > > } > > > > two things to note: the text of the returned status object doesn't have > the > > original URL and instead it has a t.co URL, and the entities block now > has a > > display_url attribute associated with it. what we're hoping is that with > > this data, it should be relatively easy to create a UI where you replace > thehttp://t.co/s9gfk2d4in the text with the equivalent of > > > > <a href="http://t.co/s9gfk2d4";>http://dev.twitter.com</a> > > > > this means the user would not see the t.co link, but we all can still > > provide the protection and gather data from the wrapped link. for the > > applications that don't choose to update, the t.co link will be shown > (and > > the goal to protect users will be met). i just want to emphasize -- we > > really do hope that you all render the original URL, but please send the > > user through the t.co link. if you do choose to prefetch all the URLs > on a > > timeline, then, when a user actually clicks on one of the links, please > > still send him or her through t.co. We will be updating the TOS to > require > > you to check t.co and register the click. > > > > related to this: the way the Twitter API counts characters is going to > > change ever so slightly. our 140 characters is now going to be defined as > > 140 characters after link wrapping. t.co links are of a predictable > length > > -- they will always be 20 characters. after we make this live, it will be > > feasible to send in the text for a status that is greater than 140 > > characters. the rule is after the link wrapping, the text transforms to > 140 > > characters or fewer. we'll be using the same logic that is in > > twitter-text-rb to figure out what is a URL. > > > > look for an update to dev.twitter.com where we'll have a best practices > > document on how to use these t.co links. > > > > what's the timeline? "soon" we'll enable this on @twitterapi, @rsarver, > > @raffi, and a few other test accounts so you all have live data to play > > with. on the timescale of weeks (to potentially a month or two), we'll > roll > > this out to everybody. > > > > of course, if there are any questions, just feel free to direct them to > > @twitterapi! > > > > -- > > Raffi Krikorian > > Twitter Platform Teamhttp://twitter.com/raffi > -- Raffi Krikorian Twitter Platform Team http://twitter.com/raffi
