Twitter announces link shortener set to grow by two characters
Those using the automatic t.co link wrapper on Twitter will have to cut another two characters out of their tweets from February, as the shortener is set to expand.
HTTP links will go from 20 to 22, while secure HTTPS links will go from 21 to 23 characters, meaning users will now have only 118, or 117, characters left to tweet with.
Twitter said in a blog post: “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: 1. "short_url_length": 22, 2. "short_url_length_https": 23.
“Two weeks later on February 20th, 2013, we will begin generating and returning t.co URLs with this new maximum length. Ensure that your application is prepared to handle this change by that date.”