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T.co to be ubiquitous by Christmas

Kevin Murphy, September 2, 2010, Domain Registries

Twitter is planning on rolling out its t.co URL shortening service to all users by the end of the year, according to a company mailshot this week.
The company received the uber-short domain as part of .CO Internet’s Founders Program, probably the new registry’s biggest marketing coup to date.
Twitter intends to wrap all links inside shortened t.co URLs, and will check their intended destination pages against a list of known malware sites before users are forwarded.
Twitter told users in an email:

You will start seeing these links on certain accounts that have opted-in to the service; we expect to roll this out to all users by the end of the year. When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL.

For the branding of the .co namespace, this is obviously good news. Twitter handles something like 65 million tweets per day, many of which contain links. All will now carry the .co domain.

Twitter registers t.co for URL shortener

Twitter has registered the domain name t.co, to use as a secure URL shortener.
Just minutes ago, t.co started resolving to a page containing this text:

Twitter uses the t.co domain as part of a service to protect users from harmful activity, to provide value for the developer ecosystem, and as a quality signal for surfacing relevant, interesting tweets.

The page links to a FAQ describing its current URL shortener, twt.tl.
Whois.co shows it’s registered as part of .CO Internet’s Founders’ Program, the scheme the Colombian registry put in place to plug its upcoming launch.
Under this program, companies can partner with .CO to get a free premium .co domain if they commit to promote it.
TechCrunch was previously the highest-profile site to join the program, when it registered disrupt.co.
I would say getting Twitter on board definitely beats that deal.
.CO Internet is also currently auctioning e.co for charity. Bids have already reached $24,000.
UPDATE: Twitter published a blog post on the launch. I guess they beat me by about three minutes.
“When this is rolled out more broadly to users this summer, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL,” the firm says.
Probably too soon to say for sure, but it looks like Bit.ly is kinda screwed.