We’d like to share some upcoming changes to our t.co link wrapper with the ecosystem. We’re going to be extending the maximum length of t.co wrapped links from 20 to 22 characters for non-https URLs, and 21 to 23 characters for https URLs.
To give everyone enough time to update their applications, this change won’t go into effect for two months - so please consider this a heads up. On February 6th, 2013, the GET help/configuration method will start to return the updated values for the length of characters returned in the following key-value pairs:
A few weeks ago in mid-November, our friends at Urban Dictionary decided to implement the Follow Button across their site. They were looking to integrate more with Twitter, and were curious to see how this small change might affect their follower count. At the time, @urbandictionary was seeing an average follower growth rate of 87 follows a day in the weeks leading up to their implementation of the Follow Button.
As a developer working with Twitter's platform, you have a lot of moving parts to stay on top of. In the past few months we've announced new APIs, deprecated old APIs, added endpoints and additional data to responses, changed SSL certificates, and made a host of other changes. Keeping track of all the dates and details can be painful.