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.

Is Twitter just a tiny bit broken? Links stop working on being retweeted if comments added

Edit: 8 July 2012 - well this appears to be entirely fixed, making this post fairly pointless :)

These new short links are fine until someone tries to retweet and add a comment. The missing http:// in the originally shortened link renders the retweeted version unclickable, as shown below. I'm using either Twitter.com on Firefox, IE or Chrome on my computer and Tweetdeck for iPhone - this link is unclickable in all of them.

This means I don't click when I'm on my iPhone as it's just a bit of a palaver. I need to pretend to RT the tweet so that I can get it in an editable format, select the relevant bit, copy and paste it into Safari - no. I wonder if others give up too and if this means fewer people see stuff. I've heard a fair few bleats about this but far fewer than I'd have imagined - so what iPhone tools are you using that means you're not noticing or troubled by this? (Copying and pasting is the work of seconds on a PC so I don't care much about the extra step there).




Not everyone agrees with me but I really think that one of the strengths of the 'classic' RT is to use it exactly as Ed has done here and add a comment, bon mot, bit of context or some other contribution (if enough space it could be a link to a related item).

Doing so, with the new style of shortened links, wrecks the clickability of the link though. Any time Ed (or anyone) posts an RT and adds an emphatic "This!" to it, or any other comment, if I'm reading on my iPhone I'll have to miss it or fave it for later.

The "correct" way to RT this is to do so without adding any comment (the link seems to work fine then). On iPhone Tweetdeck you're given a choice as to how to RT something - 'classic' or 'new'.

But if I see a post because Ed's retweeted it (I follow him) and decide to retweet it myself, then Ed gets no 'credit' as far as I can tell. Twitter records me as having RTed Zoe Corbyn but the network of how it got to me (I follow Ed, Ed follows Zoe) is missing.

Since Twitter seems to be all about making networks more explicit (if it isn't it's been doing an awfully good impression of it and I often follow a new person because of how they've been interacting with and been RTed by others that I follow) this seems a bit of shame.

So... the new shortened link system would seem to direct users to use the new style RT and I already disliked the new RT anyway (in most cases) because of its 'network-hiding' properties.

Given that Twitter brought in the @ protocol after users started using it and the 'new RT' after people had been manually RTing posts for years (OK that is one advantage of the new RT system!) and also given that the protocol of MT for modified tweet has gained ground (funnily enough I learned of it through following Ed) I would like to suggest that Twitter brings in some sort of auto-MT system so that any link in a manually retweeted link can be made clickable. Or do some magical thing that makes anything in the format blah.blah/blah show up as a link...

Background to the shortened links
Twitter's brought in auto-shortened, active links (text that isn't written as an http://blah..com web address but which goes to one when you click on it, like this) that dispense with the http:// bit at the front.

The good thing about this is that there are two ways in which you can get more text in your tweet - the link will be shortened anyway and you'll gain an extra 7 characters from the http:// bit. Another bonus is that when you hover over an address it will show you the real address (this allows people to see where a link is going to take them - see more at this Mashable page).

If you're on a desktop / laptop computer and type a full-length web address then you'll see it as it is, Twitter will tell you it'll be shortened and your character countdown re-adjusts itself to tell you how many characters remain based on the shorter URL. It's pretty cool. It's not optional though (for the last three years I've turned almost every link I've ever posted as a fairly-short is.gd/ URL and I think even these get tweaked).

Shortened link (ha!) for this post is http://is.gd/dZThpn - I put it at the end cos I thought it would be a bit confusing at the beginning, but I have these in most of my posts.