I’ve written before about how much I love HootSuite, and that the only thing that stops me from rating it as the perfect Twitter client is that it doesn’t allow users to choose which URL shortener they want. Instead, you’re stuck with ow.ly, which has some nice stats and things like that, but because of the frame ow.ly adopts is pretty unpopular with a lot of users.

End result? Your retweets suffer. Massively.

Jonathan proposes that a Greasemonkey script might be a workaround solution, and has found one here.

But hacks are never ideal. HootSuite has a big-enough user base – and is close enough to being perfect – that a premium version of the software could be well-received by a lot of fans, particularly the Twitter power-users and brands that love the superb features of the client.

For a few dollars a month – and I mean a few – HootSuite Pro could give us:

1. A choice of URL shortener (of course, everybody should go for bit.ly, but having a choice is the way to go) with full integration, including the stats
2. More profiles
3. Better management of our HootSuite team (i.e., being able to see stats for each)

Of course, this would all sync perfectly with the HootSuite iPhone app (which is highly recommended) as it does now (but you’d lose the ads). It would be nice to see things like Twitter-style retweets appearing in our stream, too.

Where’s the downside? HootSuite gets a revenue stream, and lots of us get what we want.

Why are desktop-based Twitter apps so scared of charging for their fine products? Hasn’t the success of Tweetie et al taught us anything? If you make your client absolutely first class, people will pay. They won’t pay a lot, but enough of them will pay something to make a difference for you. And you can still fund everybody else with adverts and ow.ly.

Here’s the thing: for me, stuff like Facebook and Foursquare implementation within my Twitter client is not important. In fact, I don’t care. If I want Facebook, I’ll go to Facebook.com.

However, if I want Twitter, going to Twitter.com isn’t really the best solution. That’s why I go to HootSuite. But if I have to co-manage HootSuite with bit.ly sidebar (for links) and Twitter.com (for retweets) then the process is broken.

And when somebody comes along who fixes all of this, I, like a ton of other people, will inevitably jump ship. HootSuite’s in a position here to do something really special. Let’s hope they make their move in time.

A minor, but important change that’s been slowly creeping its way into Twitter.com this week. And now that I’ve got it, I assume everybody has – Twitter has replaced the ‘update’ button on the website (below the text box) with the insular, but significantly more definitive, ‘tweet’.

Twitter has been furiously trying to trademark both tweet and retweet in recent months, with little success. In November, the company adjusted the call-to-action text on the homepage, changing it from ‘What are you doing?’ to the more philosophical ‘What’s happening?’

It’s all about the little things.

Still, it’s fairly evident that the platform has been moving away from being a simple status update service, both in terms of how it is seen and wants to be seen, and this change likely reflects that forward-thinking.

(Inspired by a musing from Robert Scoble – more on this later.)

Increasingly, your choice of username on Twitter is becoming a really big deal. Twitter profiles rank really well on most search engines, often at the very top of the results, and as more and more people join the network the right name – both in a sense of accuracy (certainly for brands) and, for convenience and retweet value, length – is becoming important.

Having an accurate username that reflects or exactly matches your business or brand name is of course ideal. Twitter has policy in place that allows them to “reclaim usernames on behalf of business or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark to those names”, which is fine and how it should be (even if it isn’t always actioned).

But what about the little guys? What if somebody has the Twitter username that we want. Shouldn’t we be able to buy it from them?

Here’s the thing – buying and selling Twitter profile names is a serious breach of their TOS. A few websites have tried to get around this, but it’s essentially illegal.

Earlier today, Robert Scoble expressed an interest in the essentially dormant @s username, later boosting his bid with a $5,000 offer to charity.

This offer was then doubled by @shervin, raising the valuation to $10,000.

Ultimately, the auction is likely to prove moot, as Twitter themselves now own the @s username. But Scoble’s query is legitimate, because as Twitter continues to creep up on 100 million users, the availability of even remotely credible usernames is rapidly beginning to thin out. Which raises a valid question: should you be punished with a crappy username on Twitter simply because you came to the service late?

Internet domain names are, of course, bought and sold en masse. The best and most lucrative domains are quickly snapped up, and can command an enormous selling price on the open market.

Why should it be any different on Twitter? Doesn’t it make sense for the company itself to set up an internal auction system so that the top profile names can be sold to the highest bidder? Okay, so they’ve got legitimate issues with squatting, but if they increased the verification process for all sign-ups to the platform then this would become far less of an issue, almost overnight.

And even if they didn’t, so what? This open system works for the rest of the internet – first come, first served. And if you still want it, you have to pay for it. Naturally they would continue to claim back profiles that clearly breached trademarks, become dormant or otherwise fell foul of TOS.

Of course, any two parties could do this secretly, and I’m sure this happens all the time, but the risk is enormous. If Twitter finds out, it’s goodbye to that account. And all that money.

Reality check: as Twitter expands, @business has a lot more clout and financial worth than @b129P43g. It isn’t just about your username, of course – you actually have to do a spot of engaging, too – but as a starting point, especially for brands and influencers, thevalue should not be underestimated. And if there’s a value there, I say people should be able to pay for it.

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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