Twitter plans to record all links clicked

From CNET News.com: By the end of the year, Twitter expects to be recording and analyzing every link users click on when using its Web site or any of the thousands of third-party microblogging apps.

An e-mail announcement Wednesday night said "all users" will soon be switched over to Twitter's t.co link-shortening service and, once that happens, "all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps" will use it. In addition, the company said, when anyone clicks "on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click."

Wednesday's news was soon met with a smattering of privacy concerns, with some Twitter users dubbing it a "disgusting data landgrab" and others wondering if there will be an "opt-out policy" for those who prefer not to have their clicks recorded. Another concern: a centralized link-redirector means a centralized point of failure in a service known for being frequently overloaded.

Of course, Twitter is not alone--and this point deserves to be stressed--in recording what links visitors click.

Yahoo tracks searches through the rds.yahoo.com hostname. Microsoft's Bing and Facebook appear to use Javascript to record clicks through the "OnMouseDown" function. And Google sometimes, but not always, seems to use redirects to track links clicked on from its home page (here's how to do this yourself).

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