How to avoid Twitter's URL shortening

Question

I want to post an URL in Twitter, but I don't want it to be shortened - the domain is a 3 letter word so it doesn't even make sense to shorten it. However, when I am writing the tweet in the website I see the message "Link will appear shortened" and I don't find an option to disable that.

Answer 1

This is not possible. Twitter API will automatically shorten any URL.

_{Earlier, there was a way to go about disabling the URL wrapping - create a custom twitter app(example: a hosted dabr install) and disable URL shortening at the API settings. But now this option is no longer available}

Answer 2

The only way to display a full URL in Twitter is by using a 'fake' dot. This will obviously make the URL non-clickable too, but it's a good method if you want to make sure the URL gets displayed in a recognizable way.

BTW, here's such a fake dot: ․

Answer 3

Original answer: The accepted answer and others are incorrect, or perhaps "no longer correct". See http://www.labnol.org/internet/twitter-auto-converts-links/20771/

Revision in response to downvotes and suggestion for inline response:

The correct answer is that you need a "zero width space" character after special characters. For example @^Foo (where the ^ is this special character described below) will not translate into an At-link, and aaa.^com will not translate into a link.

This character is HTML ​ or Unicode U+200B. But you can't enter this directly in Twitter. The way to get this character depends on the application you're using, your system, and your fonts.

Method 1: In general, to enter this on your keyboard, make sure numlock is turned on, hold down the Alt key, enter 8203 on the numeric pad, then release the Alt key:

Alt+8203

It will insert the proper character, but you may see garbage depending on where you type this and the fonts. Some people report success with Alt+08203.

So on to method 2: The web page to which I linked has a javascript that inserts the special character into text. You can go there and use that, or you can insert the following code into a scriptlet of your own:

<p>Enter text:
<input id="tweet" 
  onkeyup="document.getElementById('result').innerHTML='<br/>'+
  this.value.replace(/([@#\.])/ig, '$1&#8203;');"
  type="text">
<span id="result" style="background:lightyellow"></span>
</p>

Finally for method 3: In Windows you can open the Character Map application. It's available in the Accessories start group, or by running charmap.exe.

You can copy U+200B like so: Activate advanced view and use the input field labelled "Go to Unicode". See above. Input 200B and the character will be highlighted. Click Select and Copy. Now the character is in your copy buffer. You can paste it into Twitter as follows (of course ctrlV means you hit that keystroke at that point) :

"This is not a #ctrlVhashtag, and foo.ctrlVcom is not a domain"

In summary, the answer is to use the zero-width space, but I've also added the answer to the next question (often asked on SO) which is "but how do I get that character?" While this is not a simple answer, it is nevertheless a solid answer to the question that was asked, and I believe folks will agree that other "you can't do that" answers provided here have been incorrect, or at least they are no longer correct.

I hope folks will reconsider the downvotes and perhaps even upvote this. Thanks.

Answer 4

You cannot do this due to security concerns, as mentioned before. It allows Twitter to have a kill switch over every link on the site. The problem, however, is that if you then link a Facebook account to your Twitter account, the link goes through onto Facebook in the form http://t.co/df334o. This makes the link look ugly and sometimes out of context of what you're trying to convey.