As anyone who’s anyone on Twitter knows, just about any and every link you throw on the site now, including links to posts on this site, gets automatically wrapped in their t.co shortener–yes, even if the link’s already been shortened. They announced the rollout in June, and as of yesterday or the day before, have made it pretty much automatic and global. While some clients have developed workarounds, most of them get to put up with automatic URL shortening. Which, yes, is wonderful and great and convenient in theory. Except for one very minor little catch. Links, particularly links posted from this site and others like it, are already shortened through Bitly–we used TinyURL before that. In 99.999% of cases, they’re already small enough to fit inside their 140-character limit. Shortening them again just seems kind of like a waste of resources, really. And yet, there’s no real way to turn off the service on your account–meaning, unless you’re using a client or service who’s already coded a way around t.co, which most apparently haven’t yet, your shortened link is shortened yet again–often to no real benefit (19 character URLs versus 20? Really?). T.co is awesome, in theory. In practice? T.CNo. Just sayin’.

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