• Softpedia, Wednesday, June 9, 2010 1:34 PM

Sorry bit.ly, but Twitter has confirmed plans to introduce its own URL-shortening service, which, according to Softpedia, "will be used all the time, regardless of whether a link is already shortened with a third-party service." Expected to be rolled out broadly by the end of the summer, Twitter's URL shortener will use the domain t.co.

"Since early March, we have been routing links within Direct Messages through our link service to detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of malware, phishing, and other dangers," Twitter's Sean Garrett explained in a blog post. "Links reported to us as malicious are blacklisted, and we present users with a page that warns them of potentially malicious content if they click blacklisted links ... We want users to have this benefit on all tweets," he said. Twitter's t.co will soon be used in all tweets on the site and through third-party apps. The links will be presented to the users either in their entirety, truncated, or as the page title -- apparently Twitter hasn't decided yet.

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