You are correct, Twitter is doing the bit.ly conversion on their end. They automatically shorten URLs based on some set of metrics (I think character length and formatting have something to do with it), and there's no (current) way to suppress this behavior when posting.
The best you can do is use the bit.ly API to un-shorten the link and grab your URL key from there. Have a look at the /expand method in their API: http://code.google.com/p/bitly-api/wiki/ApiDocumentation -Chad On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 6:04 PM, Nancy M <nmira...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'm using perl (NET::Twitter) to submit a status update. The update > consists of a text string and a URL of our tracker module. The > purpose of this is to allow us to track any sales that arise as a > result of the clickthrough and associate them with the source. > > It appears that the URL is being changed: > > The source reads (for instance) > Added Item: 5.25 carats princess diamond pave engagement ring new > http://tias.com/cgi-bin/tw.fcgi/itemKey=3923612043 > > where http://tias.com/cgi-bin/tw.fcgi/itemKey=3923612043 is the key to > our tracker and the page that is eventually served is > http://www.earthling.com/13527/PictPage/3923612043.html (that latter > was determined from http://www.earthling.com/13527/PictPage/3923612043.html) > which is a very very handy tool, I must say. > > However, when I interrogate the text from twitter, it turns out that > our URL has been changed to a bit.ly one: > > p $result->{text} > Added Item: 5.25 carats princess diamond pave engagement ring new > http://bit.ly/11qkU1 > > I've dug down through the LWP::userAgent level and it seriously > appears that this change is happening at Twitter > > Firstly, it isn't on our bit.ly account (and I really don't want to > use bit.ly for this) and second why is this happening? > > Any advice? > > Am I missing something critical in the documentation someplace? >
