I understand the need for analytics, but I _think_ most twitter users don't care about that. Couldn't twitter just not count the URL towards the 140 characters?

I understand the need for analytics, but I _think_ most twitter users don't care about that. Couldn't twitter just not count the URL towards the 140 characters? (Yes, more complicated than that in order to prevent spam or whatever, and yes backward compatibility sucks. But basic auth is being killed too.)