For a few minutes this evening I saw a 'Shorten' button next to the 'Tweet' button on twitter.com which shortened URLs in a tweet using bit.ly, rather than t.co, Twitter's own shortener. Just as I was thinking it was a new feature it disappeared. I saw a few other users mentioning that they had the button as well and Tim Shey (@moth) had the foresight to capture and post a screenshot of the phantom button.

Maybe Twitter are testing out this new feature or rolling it out to a few users. It is something that is missing from twitter.com and could be very useful. Watch this space..