Twitter Will Now Mask All URLs With ‘t.co’ Wrapper

Twitter is now masking all urls passed through the service with the t.co wrapper. Before today, Twitter had been wrapping urls longer than 20 characters. Now they are masking all urls, regardless of length, in both tweets and direct messages alike.

Twitter wants to learn more about its users. To do that, it needs to be able to track what users are sharing. Today Twitter publicly stated that they will be filtering and analyzing urls for malicious content. But the data they gather will also include links to non-malicious content. Twitter hopes to mine this data — the non-malicious content — to better understand how users interact with the service.

Trippy Is Travel Planning Done Right

Trippy is a new startup that launched earlier today at TechCrunch Disrupt. Trippy hopes to make travel planning a social experience shared amongst friends.

For example, let’s say Andre was planning a trip to Thailand. Andre would use Trippy’s Facebook integration to ask his friends who have been to Thailand what he should do while visiting the country. This makes sense as Andre’s friends are likely to know what he likes to do in his free time.

Trippy calls this a “friend-sourced” solution. Trippy is hoping that users will enjoy reliving trips as they help their friends plan trips of their own. Facebook photo album integration is sure to inspire chatter amongst friends, which helps tie users into the service.

Trippy: Don’t hire a travel agency, leverage your social network instead.