How to send and receive web addresses via Twitter DM - break the URL - an imperfect fix

Simpler solution - use goo.gl as the URL shortener. Twitter seems to let these through no problem.

More at
How to skirt Twitter's restriction on links in DMs  
Tired of being told you can't send a link via direct message on Twitter? Me too!
by Jason Cipriani
@MrCippy
7 August 2014 10:24 pm BST

------- OLD INFORMATION, kept for historic interest ;) -------

1. Short version
2. More explanation
3. Glossary / terms used

1. Short version
Break the URL et http://www.google DOT co.uk and the other person can reconstruct the URL at the other end by replacing the DOT with a "." and joining the ends together. It's exactly the same as the good old days of writing REMOVE when publishing your email address on the web, eg jo.brodieREMOVE@fake-email-address.com to stop automated address scraping.

You need to position the DOTs and various bits in the address strategically so that what you send does not show up as a linked URL (ie it changes colour, usually to blue, as you type it and Twitter spots that it's an address). If it's gone blue Twitter has recognised that it's a link and won't send it in a DM. The game is to type the text of a link in such a way that it doesn't become hyperlinked.

Long broken URLs that no longer get the 'protection' of being considered as a nominal 18 characters can't be sent in this way, instead convert the URL into a short version (eg use TinyURL or is.gd to do so) and send that, but in a broken form.

Smartphone users will have to copy the text (either the broken URL or the entire tweet depending on the app they use) and wrangle the address either in Safari (for iPhone users) or in whatever notepad type of app is available (recommended).

2. More explanation
Can't send links via DM
Twitter appears to have disabled the option of letting people send DMs that contain web addresses. It's not clear if this is a glitch or a new policy to reduce those phishing spam messages which encourage people to click on a link, that then takes them to a (fake) Twitter login page.

Previously received links are treated with suspicion
Clicking on links in previously sent DMs takes you to a holding page with a message suggsting that the link might be dodgy (even on known-safe links) so it seems that the threshold for wariness is a bit high. Possibly this has arisen because Twitter is rolling out an option for people to opt in if they wish to let anyone send them DMs regardless of whether they are following those people (probably ideal for letting people DM utility companies without following them I think).

Fool Twitter into thinking your link is not a link
Whenever you begin to type a web address into Twitter it soon recognises it as an URL and automatically hyperlinks it, making it appear blue (colours may vary depending on your own colour scheme settings). In a test just now it kicked in as soon as I'd typed the last 'o' in http://www.google.co - Twitter will not send a real URL in a DM so you need to break the address in such a way that it doesn't try to turn it into a clickable link.

Typing http://www.google DOT co.uk didn't cause the URL to be hyperlinked (because it's a broken URL) but let me send that address to someone who could then 'splice' the two correct bits of the URL together and remove the DOT bit. For geneticists I imagine this is like exons and introns, for sound editors it's possibly a bit like de-umming a tape loop ;)

Handling longer addresses that make the tweet too long to send
Note that any URL sent via Twitter is given a standard 18 characters (no matter how long the actual web address is). When a longer URL is broken in this way Twitter can't 'autoshorten' it for you so really long addresses can't be sent. The only way round this that I can think of is to use one of the URL shortening services (see above) and then break that link to send, eg http://tinyurl DOT AbCd12

Smartphone users
It's a right fiddle and no mistake to wrangle an unclickable link on a smartphone. I use Echofon on iPhone and if there's no (apparent) link in a DM the only option available to me is to copy the entire tweet. To do this click on the tweet, let go, and the word Copy appears. Click 'Copy' and then you can either open up Safari, paste it into the address bar and delete out the irrelevant bits or open up the Notes app, paste it in there and edit with more ease. I can't think of a better way of doing this but if you know do please let everyone know in the comments.

Ironically I wrote this only last week about my irritation with Echofon's habit of truncating longer tweets with the TMI.me shortening service, sending people to a TMI page and wrecking any URLs sent in the tweets. Fortunately it's easy to switch off.

3. Glossary / terms used
Web address / URL (uniform resource locator) / link all refer to something like http://www.google.com

DM - direct message, often believed to be the same as a PM (private message) but one can never be entirely certain...

Hyperlinked means a clickable address.
http://www.google.com is unhyperlinked, but http://www.google.com is, as is this - Google.

Twitter DM wrangling, how do you do this? - small post for @digitalmaverick

With old Twitter you could easily scroll back for AGES to read your own tweets, @mentions or DMs. Although you can never scroll further back in time than 3,500 (them's the limits alas) you can sometimes find a random ancient tweet via one of the search tools - I think Topsy.com is the best. 

However DMs are not available to any tools other than apps that you sign into by authorising it to use your Twitter account. 

I've found with New Twitter (I don't yet have New New Twitter) that most of my DMs appear to have disappeared from view, but if someone sends me a new DM then I can see a very long conversation with them stretching back in time. It seems that you can see these tweets only when they are 'called up' in this way. 

Incidentally I also rate Chirpstory and Storify for a quick way of grabbing a bunch of hashtagged tweets (Chirpstory wins it for me, the interface isn't quite as lovely as Storify but you can grab tweets by the page rather than individually and you can reorder them so they appear chronologically).

@digitalmaverick is trying to read some of his older DMs and I love a Twitter archive challenge but this one is likely to thwart me as I don't really know what to suggest. digitalmaverick I have failed you ;)

Snapbird.org has already been suggested (I'm reading @digitalmaverick's timeline!) and I managed to find a DM I'd sent from 18 July 2011 which isn't bad at all. Of course you have to have a particular search word in mind rather than being able to be reminded of what you wrote. For example I like reading my old sent emails and being reminded of something that I'd forgotten (which evidently I'd not be able to search for).

So my suggestion is either to switch on email notifications of DMs (and set up an email filter to whisk them straight into a folder that you can safely ignore but search or browse later) or get all your friends to send you DMs in the hope of calling up earlier ones.

What tools are there that can help with DMs? Any expertise I have is limited to hashtags I'm afraid... meanwhile there are umpteen Twitter tools I've collected here so that's a good place to start looking.

• A list of tools for finding or capturing tweets (30 May 2011, updated 14 October 2011)

P.S. Also - the reason you can't spot your hashtagged tweet in a search might be answered by these Quora questions and answers.

• Why don't my tweets show in hashtag feeds? - and see related questions in the panel to the right.