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Twitter to launch t.co - bad day for bit.ly?

TWITTER is setting up a new URL shortening service for all links shared
through twitter. The company said that this new service would aim to detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of malware, phishing, and other dangers.

The URL shortening service is already live for few accounts for testing
purposes, and is hosted on the domain name t.co.

This development may mean that other shortening services, born out of
twitter will disappear into cyber space. Twitter is currently using bit.ly
as its default URL shortening service for long URLs and this move will
certainly affect this service.

Twitter has stated that:

"If you are already partial to a particular shortener when you tweet, you
can continue to use it for link shortening and analytics as you normally
would, and we'll wrap the shortened links you submit."

However, the use of t.co will mean that tweeters will gain at least two
extra characters. So will people remain loyal to bit.ly or will they want
more room to tweet?

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