Why can't we just have links in Tweets?

Does this not bother any of the standards aware geeks out there?

If Twitter is a micro blogging service, why can't I embed links in my tweets. At the end of the day, it's HTML.

So rather than posting: 

Just had beer with Erik and Marcus Bonfante, he is a brilliant musician.

I have to do something like this:

Just had beer with @mossgrowonrock and Marcus Bonfante http://bit.ly/1Z1I8C, he is a brilliant musician.

This is just bad in so many ways but nobody seems to care.