Twitter buys a Trinidad and Tobago domain .tt

Twitter now owns the twee.tt domain, which ends with the “.tt” country domain for Trinidad and Tobago. Is Twitter planning on filling some more holes with its own URL shortener or is this merely a defensive move to maintain control over use of the word “Tweet”?

Twitter recently launched its own Blackberry app and acquired the Tweetie iphone app, putting it in more direct competition with some of its third-party app developers. Twitter currently uses bit.ly as its default URL shortener, but could easily switch to twee.tt. Shortening all links to twee.tts makes sense from a branding perspective. Twitter tried (and failed) to trademark “Tweet” and last summer warned developers from using the term, before backing off. Twitter uses the term on its own website, of course, and it is strongly associated with the company.

To be clear, just because it owns the Twee.tt URL doesn’t mean that Twitter is planning on doing anything with it. Twitter owns many domains which it is just sitting on, preventing others from acquiring, or reserving for future use. Twitter also owns twitter.tt and someone applied for twe.tt on March 27, 2010. None of the .tt domains are yet live.

Twitter could also use the domain for new products. For instance, if it finally launches advertising at its Chirp conference this week, it could assign specific URLs such as twee.tt or others to advertising messages with links in them.

. Someone should buy tw.it before twitter so they could make a profit.

I think its just a business move, covering the bases and protecting their branding. We'll see if they actually launch anything successful under that domain. They're already popular here so I don't see how it could help because it would cost more money and marketing.

Yup its just to help protect their name because people can make money out of it, now the part about using a .tt (Trinidad and Tobago) domain for a site not associated or dealing with the country is not good. .tt domain should only be used for Trinidad and tobago sites, not because it looks good and its short you should buy it and put what ever you like, no its a ccTLD and their are restrictions, even if some countries don't impose them

I don't really care too much. ".tt" is not important. Its basically just the country domain for T&T. what should matter is what comes before that prefix... If they want twee.tt then whatever. I do agree that our .tt should infact be restricted to local entities, but we don't own, nor have any say in distribution or domains.. We are all customers.