I do twitter, i post links to twitter. I wanted more details into my links I post into twitter, so I setup my own link shortener - shurls.ca. I notice, I get anywhere between 10 and 30 clicks to my links with in about 5 seconds after I post my tweet.. Light Bulb.. Breakage, Carnage Follows.
Yes, that is how I think. Sad, I know.
Anyway.. I start asking, what happens if I send a link, in a tweet, that just 301 redirects to it self? Yeah, evil.. So I send out this tweet:
I want to see what happens to bots when you put a self referring link in twitter - so don't click this: http://www.shurl.ca/roll - http://twitter.com/coolacid/status/20803314903
And the gory details followed.
With in about 30 seconds, I had about 300 hits, in under a minute, I decided to turn off the redirect, and redirect to something else before I got into trouble with my host :)
Final count: From 11:29:22 to 11:32:11 I had over a thousand hits.