San Francisco, California-based Twitter could soon be launching its very own URL shortener. You see, the company has acquired the twee.tt domain name, which is not yet live. The .tt is is the official country code top-level domain [ccTLD] for Trinidad and Tobago. Now, Twitter could also just be taking a preventive measure here, and just insuring that no one will use the aforementioned domain name.
Just this past Friday, Twitter announced its acquisition of Twitter-client Tweetie. The company plans to make the application its own, and distribute it for free. This has put many third-party developers in fear, given that they will be competing directly with the company that they are developing for.
If Twitter would launch twee.tt as it own URL shortener, this would put the company in direct competition with bit.ly — the default URL shortener currently used by most Twitter user.
Now, before panic runs rampantly, this is not the first time that Twitter acquires a new domain name. The company reportedly owns a myriad of domain names, which are not in use at the moment, just to prevent others from using them. Additionally, Twitter has tried in a couple of occasions to trademark the word ‘tweet.’ The attempts have been unsuccessful. Therefore, there’s not many reasons to worry about Twitter launching its own URL shortener. Al least, not for now.
via Erictric