CNN URL Shortening on Twitter (@cnnbrk) #CNNFail

Why isn’t CNN using short URLs for their Twitter posts? They have the most popular news account on Twitter and they’re missing a great opportunity.

Most of the announcements from @cnnbrk don’t include links to the breaking news article. They should. And they could do it with style since they’ve got a 3-letter domain.

Current links look more like: http://www.cnn.com/video/world/2009/06/21/von.iran.injured.youtube

Or they’ll use bit.ly (if they include a link at all): http://bit.ly/HnWNV

This could be much more easily inserted in a tweet as (non-working example) http://cnn.com/123xYZ

For that matter, why aren’t all of the major 3 and 4 letter domain news networks using shortened URLs for their tweets?