TinyURL no longer tiny enough

It would seem that TinyURL, the URL shortening service, is no longer in use over at Twitter.com. In Twitter’s early days it quickly became clear that folks using the service wanted to save space when posting messages containing often long URL’s, and to fix this Twitter swiftly implemented the TinyURL service in order to free up space found in the 140 character limit.

Recently it has been spotted that the URL shortening service of choice over on Twitter has changed to bit.ly. No reason as to why the switch was made has been announced, but first and foremost it would seem the change has occurred due to the service on offer from bit.ly providing an even smaller URL, saving yet more precious tweet space.

Upon further research the move to bit.ly becomes clear. Betaworks, the company behind Summize (known for search.twitter.com) are also behind the bit.ly service. Twitter aqquired the Summize service last July, so the obvious question here is, does this move to bit.ly pave the way for Twitter to buy the shortening service?

Either way, shorter URL’s for all!