Scripting News: A new way of linking in tweets (Scripting News)
PXLated
· 11 months ago
I guess I like the Markdown style the best Mark displayed - Visually clean. Cleaner than piping.
Mark Quezada
· 11 months ago
Markdown style links seem to make more logical sense:
[photo](http://bit.ly/DMhr)
... 1 more character but cleaner in my opinion. And perhaps at some point more of markdown could be supported automatically.
Todd D.
· 11 months ago
I prefer the Markdown syntax also. No need to reinvent what has already been invented.
Noah Mittman
· 11 months ago
Agreed. [x](y) is only one character more than the [x|y] format, and it's MUCH more human-readable. Plus, lots of people already know how to use it.
Edd Dumbill
· 11 months ago
Nifty! That's what we did with the Chump bot from IRC, see my writeup at http://www.ddj.com/184412325 (not my original idea, derived from work by Bijan Parsia). There are many parallels between IRC and Twitter.
Alexis
· 11 months ago
Sorry I don't get it. Where is it supposed to be rendered with the word linked ? On twitter ?
dave
· 11 months ago
Where ever. It's the same way people used @ and # before any software implemented it. A bootstrap. (I have software I'm working on that uses this.)
Ken Sheppardson
· 11 months ago
Except in this case lots of people have already implemented this, i.e. simplified markup for links. Markdown, Textile, every wiki on the planet... everybody comes up with some simple way to represent links like this without needing the "a href" overhead. Which "standard" is this?
Alexander Horre
· 11 months ago
The official [portrait|http://tinyurl.com/9mclgo] of the new President. If that is your new twittering, my twitter homepage and Twhirl show it like that.
Joey Baker
· 11 months ago
it would be sweet if twitter was smart enough to pickup this syntax and eliminate the need for the "http://" when the [item|link] style is used.
dave
· 11 months ago
Oooh, that's a good idea. That's 7 characters. Everyone's gotta love that. :-)
John Magnus
· 11 months ago
Although a nice idea, I don't think this would work. Remember that microblogging services also send notices via text messages and other channels not intended for the task (for instance IM). While the original idea would at least offer some functionality (at least there is an identifiable URL), stuff like this would break in all such devices/channels (resulting in non-clickable URLs when using SMS and IM etc).
Joey Baker
· 11 months ago
yes, it might break on SMS… 2 options: • assume that enough people have smartphones capable of getting around this that you can develop for future tech instead of burdening yourself with outdated technology • ignore sms links b/c sms isn't really designed for following hyperlinks anyway.
Loic Lemeur
· 11 months ago
Seesmic video reply from Disqus.
dave
· 11 months ago
Great! It makes sense to support it in Twhirl, that way the user just has to hot-up the text, wysiwyg style. Then when it sends it to Twitter it can add the markup. Very good.
crabasa
· 11 months ago
My first thought when I saw this post was that you were trying to find a way to let Twitter clients know what kind of content was being linked to in the short-urls so that they could provide a richer UI (ie. [mp3|http://bit.ly/link]). Do you see any merit in that, or is it better let the "item" component be anything the user likes?
ianrhett
· 11 months ago
I love the fractal, swirling nature of history. Remember when we'd snipe at each other to "conserve bandwidth?" in email, etc.? I love the tendency to economize and make efficient given some external constraint. This is way cool.
Please accept this as a fan comment. Tech posts like this often sail straight over my head (and you know it because you provide plenty of non-tech posts for the likes of me). As it happens, I do see the point of putting links into tweets and such even though I don't entirely understand how it works. I'm proud to witness this evolutionary process first hand.
Mark Dodge Medlin
· 11 months ago
Is this just in the idea stage, or is it supposed to be working on Twitter right now? Because from what I can see, it isn't. I tried it in a couple of tweets without success, and in your tweets, Dave, I still see everything within the brackets. In any case, it's a great idea.
karl
· 11 months ago
I tried this, and it didn't work, what did I do wrong?
Skimmed the links and I guess it's not meant to do anything, other than provide a little extra info.
Still confused about the use of the word "render" in the post. Rendered where, exactly?
joshua schachter
· 11 months ago
A UI tweak Twitter could do would be:
You put the anchor text in brackets. Like: 41 people call this [photo] a favorite
As soon as you write [] it adds a field below the 140 char sms, saying, "Link #1". Then the link could be pasted in there.
It's silly to be constrained by the SMS character limit - if you're on a device that only does SMS and not web, you can't follow the link anyway. So split them apart.
dave
· 11 months ago
Of course to all of it, the latter part especially. Just strip out markup as it goes through the SMS gateway. Piece of cake.
Dom
· 11 months ago
This would only really work if twitter also supported it directly on the web interface. Until then its probably better to stick with is.gd's or bit.ly's built-in postfixes like http://is.gd/fT2s/new-tweet-link rather than doing [new tweet link|http://is.gd/fT2s]
Don
· 11 months ago
bit.ly lings are blocked on my work computer. Anyone else have this issue?
tinyurl are not.
kortina
· 11 months ago
We believe this is an edge case related to some spam issues that we are working on patching today. This should be resolved very soon.
shiva
· 11 months ago
Why not abbrieviate supported url shortening services as well.
This + dropping http would be huge savings in url shortening.
then the syntax would just be [text|service shortcut:link id]
eg. [photo|b:DMhr]
Update: This shortening syntax could be based of a public RESTful service, that any client could use
halwebguy
· 11 months ago
I see what this accomplishes, but don't see the huge benefit. You're still putting the link in the text, so it's still going to count to the 140 character limit. For example, let's say we have a 15 character limit:
This is a great site! http://bit.ly/DMhr [This\http://bit.ly/DMhr] is a great site!
You'll see the "shorter" one actually takes MORE characters to store. No character limit would apply only to the rendered version, or that break virtually every rule of character limits. I'll admit it's elegant, but it certainly doesn't solve a space problem.
I agree removal of http would help, but that also hurts the ability to recognize a link, of course unless you're back in the [brackets] again. Of course, now, this makes brackets a difficult character to use if you really intend to.
Good try, but I don't think this works.
dave
· 11 months ago
You could only drop the http:// if it was inside [square|brackets].
Foomandoonian
· 11 months ago
There's a lot of good thought going into this, but it doesn't seem likely that Twitter are ever going to incorporate anything like this. I can see Evan putting it in laconi.ca, but Twitter?
That said: if you added a further restriction - that you could just use ONE word as a link, would the following syntax not save you a ton of characters?:
word*bit.ly/abcd
(The * could equally be a pipe) I'm no programmer, so this may cause issues I can't see, but the *, with no blank space either side, would tell Twitter that to the left was the word, and to the right a URI (sans http://).
Guy Parkinson
· 11 months ago
I get the feeling what is really wanted is for twitter to add metadata fields to carry entities like links that use valuable character space. All the suggested work-arounds involve adding markup parsing stuff to the twitter service itself and/or clients... Metadata would require parsing, but it would at least exist outside the character stream while remaining a native element of the post... Am I missing the point?
dave
· 11 months ago
You got it baby. If they just had a simple way to attach the equivalent of Perl dictionaries or Python hash tables or whatever each language calls them (in Frontier we call them tables) -- arbitrary collections of name-value pairs -- the Internet would get an instant point upgrade. Not just this corner of the Internet, the whole damned thing. I've been asking everyone to do this for years, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, etc etc. Twitter. Anyone! Do it -- it will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. The depression will end immediately. Obama will win a second term. :-)
halwebguy
· 11 months ago
I find some irony in this, because what we're now talking about is almost a fixed content type, related structures. I meant a great idea, but I hear people calling for standards already :)
chanux
· 11 months ago
I always wondered why twitter is not giving this option.
Mats
· 11 months ago
It seems like tumblr will not even recognize the shortened URL as an URL in the proposed format. I am messing around to see what it will recognize.
All Comments
[photo](http://bit.ly/DMhr)
... 1 more character but cleaner in my opinion. And perhaps at some point more of markdown could be supported automatically.
Plus, lots of people already know how to use it.
implemented it. A bootstrap. (I have software I'm working on that uses
this.)
:-)
• assume that enough people have smartphones capable of getting around this that you can develop for future tech instead of burdening yourself with outdated technology
• ignore sms links b/c sms isn't really designed for following hyperlinks anyway.
http://twitter.com/kidologist/status/1119652393
Still confused about the use of the word "render" in the post. Rendered where, exactly?
You put the anchor text in brackets. Like: 41 people call this [photo] a favorite
As soon as you write [] it adds a field below the 140 char sms, saying, "Link #1". Then the link could be pasted in there.
It's silly to be constrained by the SMS character limit - if you're on a device that only does SMS and not web, you can't follow the link anyway. So split them apart.
it goes through the SMS gateway. Piece of cake.
tinyurl are not.
bit.ly = b
snurl.com = s
etc..
This + dropping http would be huge savings in url shortening.
then the syntax would just be
[text|service shortcut:link id]
eg.
[photo|b:DMhr]
Update: This shortening syntax could be based of a public RESTful service, that any client could use
This is a great site! http://bit.ly/DMhr
[This\http://bit.ly/DMhr] is a great site!
You'll see the "shorter" one actually takes MORE characters to store. No character limit would apply only to the rendered version, or that break virtually every rule of character limits. I'll admit it's elegant, but it certainly doesn't solve a space problem.
I agree removal of http would help, but that also hurts the ability to recognize a link, of course unless you're back in the [brackets] again. Of course, now, this makes brackets a difficult character to use if you really intend to.
Good try, but I don't think this works.
That said: if you added a further restriction - that you could just use ONE word as a link, would the following syntax not save you a ton of characters?:
word*bit.ly/abcd
(The * could equally be a pipe) I'm no programmer, so this may cause issues I can't see, but the *, with no blank space either side, would tell Twitter that to the left was the word, and to the right a URI (sans http://).
Perl dictionaries or Python hash tables or whatever each language calls them
(in Frontier we call them tables) -- arbitrary collections of name-value
pairs -- the Internet would get an instant point upgrade. Not just this
corner of the Internet, the whole damned thing. I've been asking everyone to
do this for years, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, etc etc. Twitter. Anyone! Do it
-- it will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. The depression will end
immediately. Obama will win a second term. :-)