New Twitter feature automatically shortens more than links

Twitter has added automatic link shortening to the list of features now available natively, the company said in a blog post today.

“Just paste a link of any length into the Tweet box on Twitter.com. After you’ve composed your Tweet and you hit the “Tweet” button, we’ll shorten the link so that it only takes up 19 characters,” Twitter said in the post.

The new native link shortening feature will use Twitter’s t.co domain, which will allow the company to eliminate a huge security risk posed by third-party short link services that don’t allow Twitter to screen for malicious URLs.

Yet, in addition to shortening links, the new feature could end up shortening Twitter’s relationship with the community of developers that build applications and services focused on Twitter’s platform.

Automatic link shortening is just one of several features Twitter has decided to bring in-house, including photo sharing. For now, the company is directing users to services like Bit.ly for more detailed information about short link sharing, which is currently not available through the t.co shortener. However, that could change as soon as the company decides to roll out its advertising platform powered by recent acquisition AdGrok.