On Twitter, I’m twitter.com/pigsonthewing, but in my preferred twitter client, Dabr, I’m dabr.co.uk/user/pigsonthewing. We might refer to the former as the “canonical” URL.
There are a number of other web-based Twitter clients, too, and people using them can find my twitter stream, variously, at:
- m.twitter.com/pigsonthewing
- accessibletwitter.com/app/user.php?uid=pigsonthewing
- m.slandr.net/user?id=pigsonthewing
- tweetree.com/pigsonthewing
- m.tweete.net/pigsonthewing
- hahlo.com/user_timeline.php?user=pigsonthewing
- www.twitstat.com/m/index.php?userid=pigsonthewing
Likewise each of my Twitter posts, or “tweets”, has a URL on each of some of those domains (though not on all, it seems). For example:
- twitter.com/pigsonthewing/status/1828036334
- dabr.co.uk/status/1828036334
- accessibletwitter.com/app/status.php?1828036334
- m.slandr.net/single.php?id=1828036334
are all the same tweet. We can again regard the first of them, on twitter.com, as canonical.
Anyone using one of those services, and who wants to link to my profile or one of my tweets will either post the URL as it appears in their service, which isn’t much use to people not using that service, or expend time and effort translating the URL into the generic, canonical, Twitter format — which even then may not be of much use to someone using something else.
In the short term, we could do with some recognition of this fact from the above services, which might provide a link to the “standard” or canonical URL for that tweet; and when doing so on an individual page, should link to it using rel="alternate" and/ or rel="canonical".
Better still, there could be browser tools (such as FireFox plug-in or Greasemonkey script) to do that task, automagically.
Ultimately, though, as Twitter becomes ever more widespread, perhaps we need a pair of protocols for linking to Twitter profiles and posts. Using this, authors would be able to mark up links to me and my comments on Twitter as, say:
<a href="twitter:pigsonthewing">Andy Mabbett</a> said <a href="twitterpost:1827840116">something witty</a>.
Then, each reader could set their computer to open those links their choice of browser-based or desk-top/ mobile phone client. The setting to do could even be changed in the installation package for such tools, to aid non-technical users.
Footnote: if you know of another URL for my Twitter stream, please let me know!
Mabblog 