Over at the official Twitter blog, there’s news of a new internal URL shortener that Twitter has added to the platform.

The shortener, twt.tl, cannot be accessed directly at the moment. Instead, Twitter plans to route all submitted URLs through this new service so that it can “detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter”, adding that even if a link is shared by a different method (i.e., email notification), they will be able to keep the user safe.

Since these attacks occur primarily on Direct Messages and email notifications about Direct Messages, this is where we have focused our initial efforts. For the most part, you will not notice this feature because it works behind the scenes but you may notice links shortened to twt.tl in Direct Messages and email notifications.

It’s worth noting that when you see a URL shortened to twt.tl it doesn’t mean that the contents of that link are bad. One assumes that when malicious data is contained within a link, Twitter will simply re-route the user through to a stop page that prevents them from being affected, hopefully with an explanation as to what happened, alongside some encouragement not to retweet.

More details as they emerge.

Twitter has a strange, hot-and-cold policy to the suspension of what they refer to as ‘impersonator’ accounts, and which the rest of the world refers to as fakes.

You may recall the suspension of the Christopher Walken spoof account in March 2009. At the time, the profile was nearing 100,000 fans, which was a big deal a year ago, and was enormously popular, picking up a ton of retweets and mentions and also getting some attention in the mainstream press. However, the parody breached Twitter’s TOS regarding impersonation and was removed with no warning or fanfare, at least not from Twitter themselves.

That’s fine – that’s their rule, after all – but the problem is, much like anything else that falls under official Twitter policy, they seem to thrive on an attitude of ‘one rule for one’.

The (clearly) fake Michael Jordan account is a prime example. I mean, it’s a hoot, but it’s not real, and yet Twitter seems not to care about it one little bit.

Not only does that account have almost 75,000 followers, but it’s got the right username, too – @michaeljordan – and I can’t begin to imagine why Michael Jordan himself doesn’t do something about it. Or, for that matter, any of the many other representatives of the multi-billion dollar franchise that Jordan’s name represents.

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Twitter has rapidly become the ultimate platform for sharing and exchanging link content. For bloggers and brands, Twitter has surpassed Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious and Reddit as the greatest and most efficient way to build website traffic.

Better still, by building an engaged and relevant community, marketers can continue to reap the benefits of that traffic on a daily basis. Almost by accident, Twitter has provided us with a new and improved take on permissive marketing, which has allowed the network to leave many other websites in its dust.

It’s not all gravy, though – it’s easy to make mistakes that can be very costly indeed, leaving your tweet (and content) all but ignored. Continue making those errors, and Twitter will be about as beneficial to your brand and website as a badly-drawn flyer at your local community centre.

And while it’s perfectly acceptable to link to your own content, if you over­-sell it, self-promote too much, or start to resemble an old-fashioned salesman (even slightly), you’re very quickly going to be overlooked. Worse, likely it won’t be too long before you’re labelled as nothing more than a spammer.

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In a recent piece I wrote about how it’s a common misconception for some to think that Twitter is a ‘waste of time’.

There are others still who actually have an interest, and want to get involved, but fear getting caught up in something that’s going to be all-consuming, again leading to major time suckage. Your time is important, and anything that has a negative impact on that will be dismissed pretty quickly.

Or perhaps you think that unless you fully commit, you’re always going to feel (and worse, look) like an outsider, as if Twitter is a club to which you’ll never really belong.

The reality is, you can get everything you need out of Twitter in just 30 minutes a day. With practice, even less. Used wisely and with good habits, even this relatively brief period of time can be immensely rewarding and informative, to businesses and individuals alike.

The best part? Everything listed here can be easily managed at Twitter.com and Twitter search. The only thing you need is access to your favourite web browser, which means that software restrictions in the workplace (or on your mobile handset) aren’t going to hold you back.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Spread It Out And Break It Down

Let’s say you can only spare 30 minutes a day for Twitter. The network is a fluid, almost living organism that flows, trends and re-forms multiple times a day. Hence, using those 30 minutes all at once at a random point over a 24-hour period – which will usually be a hurried, last-minute thing when you get a moment to squeeze it in – isn’t the best use of your time.

Approaching Twitter in this way usually means missing out on lots of news, signal and opportunities. Which means you’ll get frustrated, and can leave you feeling like a bit of an outsider.

If your time is limited, it’s far better to slice what you have up into periods.

2. Try To See As Much Of The Twitter Day As You Possibly Can

It’s important to remember that Twitter functions over several time-zones and continents.

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Not the most useful of error messages, is it?

Three things I’m curious about:

1. Do the Twitter engineers automatically get sent a report each and every time this page appears?
2. Does it go into detail as to why it happened, or just say it happened?
3. If not (and even so), why is there no ‘report this error’ button?

Most of the time, this error can be ‘fixed’ with a simple refresh. But not always, and you’d be amazed how often default pages like this are used as a catch-all for a myriad of serious faults on major websites.

The dreaded fail whale is increasingly a thing of the past, but I see one of these error pages at least once a day. I really hope somebody important is paying attention and this isn’t all just lip service.