One reason I like microblogging on my own web site is that I can control the links and simple formatting. I’ve noticed lately that Twitter can’t consistently auto-link even certain domain names, for example.
This difference is illustrated well in a post I made this morning, which included timetable.fm and micro.blog. Twitter auto-linked the .blog but not the .fm. The cross-post to App.net auto-linked the .fm but not the .blog.
Here are the 3 versions:
In the final screenshot — the original from my own site, from which the others were pushed out automatically — you can see how I’ve specifically linked the domain and phrases I wanted to. It’s a minor thing, but it just looks better when the author has a little control over the formatting. (And while I don’t use it here, my own short posts can contain text in bold or italics via Markdown, too.)
