Read all about Abetz. Fans of popular Tasmanian Senator and Industrial Relations Minister Eric Abetz will be finding it hard to follow what he's up to as the link-shortening program he uses has been bought out from under him. For a small fee, URL shorteners -- critical for distributing material on Twitter -- can be personalised to fit the profile of your company or public profile, or even if youre just a lightweight, easily amused media figure. But Abetzs office let his ownership of the shortener abtz.mp lapse, and one quick-thinking IT industry figure picked it up for a song. Links using the shortener, such as the one
in this tweet now go to a somewhat different location than Abetz or his staff had in mind. Yesterday the links were sending users to the Wikipedia page for
Otto Abetz, the Senator's great uncle, who was the Nazi ambassador to France. Today the links go to
an article on the Tasmanian Times website detailing an email argument between Abetz's brother and the website's editor. We understand Abetz's office is -- understandably -- keen to buy abtz.mp back.