Twitter.com might begin using Bit.ly to shorten URLs – Twitter journalism

Strange coincidences are not irony. So don’t say that this is ironic. It’s just a strange coincidence: @ev (Twitter Co-Founder and CEO Evan Willams) posts a tweet that he is proud of his vast team of genius candidates:

“@ev Super happy about the collection of people we’ve managed to assemble at Twitter.”

and I try to link him to my blog post praising Twitter’s growing focus on scalability:

“@JoelGibby You might enjoy this then:http://joelgibby.net/2010/03/02/twitter-developer-announces-advanced-people-search-upgrades-ahead-of-sxsw2010/”

Only, my tweet does not show up on Twitter.com as I typed. No. Instead I see:

“@joelgibby @ev You might enjoy this then:http://bit.ly/djfBoi“

I will preface the rest of this post thusly:

When I posted the link to @ev, I *did* see the link change to a bit.ly link. I won’t speculate on what Twitter is releasing, but the rest of the post is written from my perspective as a user seeing a new feature for the first time. Twitter made no announcement of any integration with bit.ly NOR have any Twitter employees openly or otherwise blogged (at least with me or as far as I know) about such features. The commentary is invaluable however and I feel it needs to be shared rather than be relegated to the “unpublished” bin. Just imagine that “has” is changed to “may” etc.

It’s great coming across new features before anyone else. It gives us (well, not me really, you) writers a chance to hustle up some copy and get it out on the realtime before anyone else has a chance to think about what just happened. It takes folks by surprise, but in a way that makes them grin (maybe even smirk a little) and say, “Twitter, you sly dogs!”

Twitter has been releasing news in unconventional ways lately, from allowing their dev team to hint at future enhancements, to making announcements via Twitter in favor of drafting “traditional” press releases. Maybe they are being modest about the iterational changes their crack team of developers are implementing, and feel it’s not front-page material. Maybe they are right.

The change in communication mode is the real story. Why put out a press release that will simply be syndicated by the big names in online and print media, but never be read or analyzed? The realtime web is afroth with budding journalists (ahem.) who would love to know EXACTLY what is going on in their favorite companies. Traditional media (and even larger blogs in some cases) don’t have time or resources to devote to every feature enhancement that Twitter makes, let alone that brand new startup that not many have heard of but has a base of rabid fans tweeting their name to the rooftops. The realtime web does however, and it’s got talent in spades.

Back to the (possible) news item: Twitter has not responded to requests for comment on the possible change. All I know right now is what I saw. And may I say: I like.

Expect to see much more of this style of journalism (quickly written, hardly edited, factual and with commentary) in the very near future. Micro-news is a new area ripe for talent. Let’s see what you got.

Joel