• The Next Web, Monday, August 22, 2011 12:29 PM

Overnight, Twitter just became what The Next Web calls "a truly influential source of traffic." How or why? As of last week, "All links (longer than 20 characters) posted on Twitter.com or any Twitter client have been wrapped with a t.co URL." As a result, all analytics tools will now pick up 't.co' as the referrer as opposed to a particular twitter client, or just twitter.com. "Analytics tools will now categorise [sic] all traffic from both Twitter.com and all Twitter clients as traffic coming from Twitter," The Next Web writes. As such, "Twitter will now be recognized [sic] as a hugely influential source of social media traffic."

Previously, it was impossible to accurately measure the impact Twitter brought through referrals. Going forward, publishers will begin to see the influence the entire Twitter ecosystem -- including specific tweets -- has on traffic to their sites. "Until now, Facebook and StumbleUpon have commonly been known as the biggest drivers of social media traffic," The Next Web adds. "With this change, my money's on that changing drastically. Make no bones about it, this is a genius move from Twitter."

Read the whole story at The Next Web »