Twitter's link service, t.co, is designed to make shortened links easier to read and safer to follow. Initial tests have gone well, too. But an announcement that Twitter will start tracking every t.co link users click has caused a bit of a stir. Twitter sent an email to users last night that in part stated, "In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co , which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link. . . .

In between the announcements about iPods, Apple TV, and a music-oriented social network, Apple and Google's mobile rivalry heated up a little more today. Steve Jobs, while discussing the success of iOS, also tossed out what was likely a veiled insult at Eric Schmidt and Android. Remember how Schmidt said in early August that 200,000 Android devices were being activated every day?

It looks like MySpace's dealings with Google aren't over - or conclusively continued - just yet. Even though a search and advertising deal is set to expire today, a report's indicated that the companies' existing contract has been extended a short time while negotiations continue. Sarah Rabil and Andy Fixmer wrote earlier this morning, "MySpace.com extended a search advertising contract with Google Inc. by one month as the News Corp.

Today is not getting off to a good start for Yahoo. NHN - which owns both the South Korean equivalent of Google and the country's largest gaming portal - has decided to stop using the American company's advertising tech, and its chief didn't exactly have nice things to say when parting ways. Indeed, NHN CEO Kim Sang Hun stated according to Jun Yang , "We desperately need an advertising platform that's more flexible and effective,

Baseball fans in Japan and four other countries have reason to celebrate today. A record-breaking deal involving YouTube and Major League Baseball has been struck, and as a result, said fans will gain access to lots and lots of footage. In an email to WebProNews, a YouTube representative provided some more details in the form of bullet points. One highlight is that "[f]ull-length, catch-up MLB games [will be] available in Japan 36 hours after they air.

Music lovers and sentimental types who have been hesitant to try out Chrome now have a somewhat compelling reason to do so. Google, Arcade Fire, and director Chris Milk have teamed up to create an experience that combines one of the band's new songs with images of the viewer's childhood home and bits of video. The project is titled " The Wilderness Downtown ," and won't run well )if at all( in browsers other than Chrome. Viewers should consider closing other programs, too,

Canadians with an interest in real estate should now get more use out of the Yahoo homepage. Yahoo Canada has partnered with a company called Zoocasa to launch a new application that's located right by eBay- and Facebook-related apps. Zoocasa is supposed to be Canada's fastest-growing real estate site, and a statement issued by Yahoo explained, "Now the more than 17 million Canadians who visit Yahoo! every month will be able to search for a new home,

Even as Facebook and Google continue to gear up for a battle for social supremacy, Yahoo's losing an important member of its social media team to a different organization. Neal Sample, the company's vice president of social platforms, is taking a job at eBay. Sample seems to have made positive impressions on most of the people he's come into contact with over the years. On LinkedIn , for example,

Organizers of the JavaOne and Oracle Develop conference may be fielding more than a few emails and phone calls about refunds this afternoon. Google, which was supposed to have a significant presence at the event, backed out today due to the lawsuit Oracle brought against it. Joshua Bloch, Google's chief Java architect, wrote on the Google Code Blog , "[W]e're sad to announce that we won't be able to present at JavaOne this year. We wish that we could,

A company that was founded for the specific purpose of addressing one of Google's weaknesses has now been acquired by the larger corporation. Angstro should help Google )and whatever sort of social network it's building( distinguish between lots of results for a given name. Angstro is shutting down due to the acquisition, and Google's given no sign of when anything will resurface, so don't count on being able to try the tech out for yourself in the near future.

The social network that acts as an online home to more than 500 million people intends to do a better job of letting them communicate with one another in the future. This afternoon, Facebook mentioned some ways in which it's improved its Chat feature and promised that further upgrades are on the way. Without getting into any technical details, Rodrigo Schmidt, a software engineer, wrote on the Facebook Blog , "[I]n the past couple of weeks,

It's widely accepted that Google is one of the world's best employers, and every open position is fought over by a multitude of applicants. However, a man who was supposed to help bridge the gap between Google and the gaming industry has left after only about four months on the job. Mark DeLoura held the title "Developer Advocate, Games," and he doesn't seem to have been lured away by another company. DeLoura didn't cite any other usual excuse for quitting, either.

U.S.-based Android users are an active )and likely multiplying( bunch, according to new data from a mobile payment specialist called Bango. The company's determined that, between the first and second quarters, the volume of Web browsing conducted on Android devices increased by a whopping 400 percent. The organization that many people see as Google's top competitor in the mobile space didn't fare nearly as well. Bango explained in an official statement,

For a long time, Orkut has been the one bright spot in Google's social media stable; it's been the sole product that became really popular in some markets, even as everything else struggled to gain users )and/or not get the axe(. Only new stats indicate that Facebook's beaten Orkut in India, which represented one of its two strongholds. According to comScore, Orkut attracted around 19.9 million unique visitors in July. Facebook bested that by attracting closer to 20.

In the not-particularly-near future, eBay's checkout process will become a simpler affair. The company announced today that it intends to stop supporting third-party checkout solutions on June 30th of next year. This seems like a wise move for several reasons. For starters, it will grant eBay more complete control over its site, and search boxes and Facebook widgets aside, it's usually wise for companies not to rely on others. Too many things can go wrong,

Google Earth fans who own smartphones and tend to spend a lot of time stuck in traffic, sitting in dentists' offices, and bored during commercials can now explore a part of the planet that was previously unavailable for sightseeing. The latest Google Earth for Android update adds underwater terrain. Fair warning: a lot of people have had trouble installing Google Earth 1.

Today is perhaps not a day on which a lot of investors will conduct spending sprees; the Dow's down 1.10 percent right now, which isn't at all encouraging. But Deutsche Bank has come to believe that investors almost definitely shouldn't acquire shares of Baidu, downgrading the stock from "Buy" to "Hold." Deutsche Bank analyst Alan Hellawell explained his company's stance in a research note, stating, "With Baidu's monetization metrics having taken a step up to a higher level,

FarmVille, Happy Aquarium, Mafia Wars, and the like are gaining ground. A new report from the NPD Group indicates that about 20 percent of the U.S. population has played a game on a social network sometime in the last three months. That works out to around 56.8 million individuals, which is a rather stunning number. What's more, 35 percent of them )or 19.9 million people( are supposed to be new to gaming, meaning growth will likely continue to take place on a large scale.

Here's something for individuals who have expressed concern about Twitter's underwhelming financial achievements: three and a half years after the company was officially founded, Adam Bain has been appointed Twitter's president of revenue. Bain previously enjoyed the title "President, Audience Network" at Fox Interactive Media. He's worked for Fox Sports, the Los Angeles Times, and Cleveland.com, too. Otherwise,

The number of people Google employs in Ireland should soon grow by 200. Google's announced that it intends to establish a new operations center in the country, and the company's wasting no time in getting it up and running. According to Ciara O'Brien , the center should become functional before the end of this year, and workers there will focus on location-based products like Google Local and Google Maps. The center could spearhead a challenge to Facebook Places, then,