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I'm sure twitter has a list a thousand items long called "Stuff to do". We have at vzaar and it always grows quicker than it shrinks, so I'm sure Twitter has more important things to do.

However, I think their is a certain time sensitivity to these things, and they are roughly related and I think it would be a good thing for both Twitter and the ecosystem if they did.

URL shorteners (if you didn't know, I know you know) take a long messy url and ... um ... shorten it it a small tight nifty url. There's a good explanation here: The Benefits And Pitfalls of URL Shortener.

With Twitters recent rise to rule-the-worldom, URL shortners are both back (it used to just be TinyURL that did then, now everyone and their spambot has one). Of course this has brought a whole host of problems and highlighted all the issues with URL shortners.

A lot of this is Twitters fault in a way. It's the 140 character limit that requires the use of URL Shorteners. However the same reason means Twitter has a great opportunity to control and win the space, and control means you can extract the most value out of it.

Not only should Twitter create their own independent service, they should incorporate this into their API. This gets the app developers on board and it makes their life easier by just working with one API. I would imagine if the twitter website and most clients are using their url shortener, they'll quickly dominate the market on Twitter, and not far behind it too.

Controlling this market is useful. Because you know what's inside those urls. You also know what kind of click through they are getting (useful data to both Twitter and the users). You can also flag spam more easily (and we know this is going to be an bigger issue than it already is), and if you are flagging spam more easily, you can build up trust that Twitter URLS are safer, which they should be.

Many people are saying the value in Twitter is less in premier user services and more in the fact it's become a "real time search engine". If that's the case they need to know what's in those URLS and the best way to do it is bake it right in.

This also allows Twitter to expand the URLs in mediums where the 140 chars is less of an issue (at least on the web and in the API returns). This makes it more valuable to developers, and should have quick take up.

The use experience could be vastly improved. Just say we know any URL size is 25 chars long (the size of the Twitter web default of TinyURL. Then anytime someone enters a URL, you can just carry on typing to 115 chars. No need to worry about size limit. You can add on a feature that automatically shows all your Twitter URLs, and their click throughs on the twitter website (or via the API). I suspect this alone would kill all the competition.

So in summary

• There's knowledge in the URL
• Twitter could know the knowledge
• Knowledge has value
• Twitter is uniquely position to dominate this space

Twitpic is really just an extension of this. It's a specialised URL shortner for pictures. In fairness there is less knowledge in this that's of direct value, but I still think Twitter should bring this in house. Unlike a URL shortner I think Twitter should buy twitpic, rather than do their own.

AFAIK Noah Everett is running twitpic.com as a one man operation and has done a great job. He's built up his own little community and I think the goodwill would do a lot for Twitter buying this. He also has 1000000 pics plus on the service and is the biggest player in this space.

However the space is fracturing, and everyones trying to get in on it. Again Twitter can do interesting things here by controlling and dominating the space (especially with the API). Whilst I don't think they should expand the 140 character limit, they should realise people are posting pictures and a lot of them. Control the space before someone controls it for you.

An interesting thing here would be building in an automatic licensing system for the press or other people who want to use public pictures. Put all pictures on a creative common license and allow the press to use them if they pay a fee. Percentage of the free goes to the user and percentage to Twitter. Users can turn this off if they want.

Think of some of the great consolidated image feeds one could build of live events, from social (gigs, sports) to news (protests, planes landing in the Hudson).

In short:

Twitter, you should do your own url shortener and buy twitpic. Really you should. I'm smart and right, and it would make your service even more awesome.

Always happy to help.

[UPDATE: 2009.05.06]

Looks Like I'm not far off. Prediction: Twitter to acquire bit.ly within the year

TechCrunch - URL Shortening Wars: Twitter Ditches TinyURL For bit.ly

This is actually not that much of a surprise. Betaworks, the startup accelerator behind Twitter related companies such as Summize (acquired by Twitter in July 2008), is also behind bit.ly, and it just happens to also count early Twitter investors and advisors Chris Sacca and Ron Conway as their own backers.

Which obviously prompts this inevatible question: does the move signal Twitter paving the way for an outright acquisition of the URL shortening service provider?

ReadWriteWeb - Twitter Crowns Bit.ly As The King of Short Links; Here's What It Means

Once Bit.ly has been put to enough use, and today's news will likely be a big part of that happening, you'll be able to ask it questions like: within the last hour, what are the five hottest web pages about President Obama's budget? What social networks are sharing links to my web page the most today? What are ornithologists on Twitter most interested in this week?

The columns and rows here are semantic key terms on pages shared, method of sharing used (Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.), number of click-throughs, time and person who created the original shortcut. There's a whole lot you can do when you have that kind of information about a link. Bit.ly says its API isn't quite there yet, but it's close.

The CEO of Zappos blogged recently on how twitter can make you happy. What followed was a rather heated discussion with two friends of mine (Hi @andrew, Hi @marc), neither of which are twitterers.

Marc offered this graph to prove that twitter does not make you (in this case me) happy.

Whilst I disagree (and would probably just replace the happy axis with a "busy" axis) it still amused me.

For the record, I quite enjoy twitter and it can make me happy. It's the most serendipitous part of my day normally. I'm not entirely sure I want to dredge up the rest of the argument.

I used to describe twitter to non-users as “Facebook status, but just that and nothing else”. But that description is not that good and doesn’t impart the real value of Twitter.

Twitter is much more than just status, as it seems to connect people emotionally. I know much more about friends of mine on Twitter than friends on Facebook. Or in real life for that matter. I know who’s having a shitty day and who’s not. Who’s in a playful mood and who’s drinking and who’s working. I don’t know who’s getting laid, but give it time.

My real life friends I have no idea what’s going on with them at all. Unless they/we call or email and everyone is too busy to do that, so I only find out when I see them, when we have plans. Which these days (wedding, beddings (kids) and buidlings (house moves)) is greatly reduced.

On the other hand shooting a few 140 character updates doesn’t take time out of the day, and once you start using twitter actually enhances the day. It enhances it because of the interaction between twitters.

It’s just this tiny little thread that shifts it from being a flat medium like facebook status to a social medium. It’s that difference that connects you to people rather than positions you as mere observer. And whilst the observation thread is nice, by itself it starts to die as it isn’t self sustaining. Where as the observation with interactivity grows and gets stronger. |t means I become a participant in my friends lives occasionally even if that participation is just Stuart getting coffee

I guess Twitter is more a small version of Facebook wall than a version of Facebook status. Of course where it really kicks Facebooks arse is where Facebook is trying to be a walled garden (come to our site come to our site come to our site) Twitter is just a node to be accessed.

I can consume and publish via the web, via IM, via text, via applications (I ♥ Twitterific), via via via via via. Which means it’s both very easy to publish, to observe and to interact with my friends on Twitter. And because it’s non time consuming (I can wack out 140 chars in a few seconds) and I can use it anywhere and any time it’s a running constant in my life.

Compare that to Facebook, which only offers an RSS feed. So when someone has something about me in their Facebook status don’t even see it. Plus because twitter has no other shit it does I only follow people I want to. Where Facebook is kinda of a storage system for people I know, people I sort of know and people who I want to sleep with.

I know lots of people bored with Facebook. Twitter on the other hand is part of my daily life.

I just wish more real friends would use it. As it really does connect people (especially busy people) socially and emotively.

... on facebook that is. And not you of course. Obviously you are really important to me. It's the other people who aren't.

I talked about this a while ago, and Meg is also talking about how Facebook needs to add relevance to the contact list..

I'm cross posting my comment on Meg's site here because I think my solution is rather nifty, and the comment I left at Meg's was pretty much blog length.

I agree with Meg, although I see it less as a venn diagram and more as a an onion. I should have drawn diagrams too. Basically I see friends ranking outwards from really important to me, to vaguely important to basically archived.

Whilst your groups idea gets the end result, I don't think it would work. People on FB don't really treat groups that way, and it involves too much work, both for the person settings things up, as well as for the other people. It also breaks down the venn diagrams of of overlapping connections, which I think is a critical part of how facebook/linkedin etc work.

What you really need is a simple, or near automated way to do this with minimal effort. Easier than the "how do I know this person" they currently have, which whilst interesting has very little value, and is mostly wrong because hard wired tick boxes cannot account for enough situations.

What I would see as a solution (which admittedly only came to me when reading your blog) is an importance bar. On the left site is "really important people" (wives, close friends, etc) and on the right side is "people I really can't be bothered with, more of a reference if I need it" (that guy I knew at school, my now married ex, etc)

Every person then needs two variables. A placement and a modifier. The placement is where you stick them on the bar. The modifier is a 1 or 2 step shift up or down the bar based on how you communicate with them.

Then when your friend a person, it gets shown below on this bar. A couple of key friends could appear on the bar as reference points. You then slide this person up or down the bar to the point where their relevance to you is. Really quick and easy and not much effort to set up.

Then in setting you can control how much information about you is revealed based on the bar position. You can also give more or less control to facebook to modify people's position automatically based on how much you communicate with them, and poke them, and view their profile etc. Information delivered to you about other people is obviously prioritised towards their importance on the bar.

I think this fairly accurately reflects how we view people in life. I think it's very little effort to do, to deliver context and simplifying things, as well as being able to dynamically change things based on activity. It also retains and holds interconnection information between contacts as well as adding too it.

I now have over 250 contacts in FB. Way more than I can manage. I suspect most people have this problem. If Facebook doesn't improve this aspect of their platform, they will start suffering from it. If they aren't already.