Twitter users learned on Thursday that the site will begin wrapping all links posted through the service with its own t.co domain. Twitter had been discussing this proposal on its blog, so the announcement is not surprising. Now that it is official, though, it is safe to start speculating on what it means to various users.
For third-party developers, of course, the move is just more bad news from Twitter, which is stepping up its competition on many fronts. For marketers, the new service is surely going to result in link tracking analytics services provided directly from Twitter. How well this will compete from those services offered by third-party providers is an open question. Twitter’s statement on that is vague: "we hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time."
