Tag Archives: Twitter

Twitter improving on URL Security.. Never to late

There are many url shortener services on the web, twitter even has its own built in function.

One of the problems here is, we don’t actually know where we are going. So it fits in the tweet, but leads straight along to FAIL.

Twitter have now decided they are going to take some steps, to reduce the risks associated with the url shortening. Their new service that will run behind the scenes will be checking and verifying these links, and intercepting and disabling the bad ones on the twitter service before we board the fail bus.

This is good news, and I am sure will be welcomed by many. I also recommend using the Firefox plugging Long URL Please, to see what’s going on.

Google, Bing, Twitter Mashup.. Social Networking / Engineering Heaven

So if for some reason you are naive enough to think that your mindless twittering is somehow private, this should really make you think again.

It has been recently announced that both Microsoft’s Bing and Google search engines will now be featuring tweets in its search results, with Bing also having something going on with Facebook.

From the Google blog:

“Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”

So what does this mean to you? Well it means every time your tweet to the world you have had a bathroom break, or that your going on holiday, or your not at home, or your goldfish has died, the whole world will see this in their search results in Google and Bing.

Something to be mindful of perhaps?? Remember, there is no privacy on the Interwebs.