Hi all,
Just wondering what people think about not using any link shorteners on the official Fedora twitter feed. Twitter actually passes all links in tweets through their own t.co/ link shortener, so using another one is just (IMHO) unnecessarily obfuscating the link from our followers on twitter. (twitter presents all t.co links as the full text, but the link itself is t.co)
Looking back through the feed, the main link shortener being used is ow.ly, which i assume is being done by whoever is using Hootsuite.
cheers, ryanlerch
Hi Ryan,
I think the use of a link shortener is adequate for Twitter. This is because they have a character limit, and using a shortener greatly helps increase the amount of text you can have in a tweet. Twitter counts your link's characters even though it passes it through its own link gateway.
Cheers, Chaoyi
On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 at 19:01 Ryan Lerch rlerch@redhat.com wrote:
Hi all,
Just wondering what people think about not using any link shorteners on the official Fedora twitter feed. Twitter actually passes all links in tweets through their own t.co/ link shortener, so using another one is just (IMHO) unnecessarily obfuscating the link from our followers on twitter. (twitter presents all t.co links as the full text, but the link itself is t.co)
Looking back through the feed, the main link shortener being used is ow.ly, which i assume is being done by whoever is using Hootsuite.
cheers, ryanlerch -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On 11/11/2015 10:03 AM, Chaoyi Zha wrote:
Hi Ryan,
I think the use of a link shortener is adequate for Twitter. This is because they have a character limit, and using a shortener greatly helps increase the amount of text you can have in a tweet. Twitter counts your link's characters even though it passes it through its own link gateway.
This is incorrect -- try crafting a new tweet on twitter.com with 115 characters, then add a link with more that 25 characters -- it will let you post it. All links on twitter go through the t.co link shortener.
cheers, ryanlerch
Cheers, Chaoyi
On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 at 19:01 Ryan Lerch <rlerch@redhat.com mailto:rlerch@redhat.com> wrote:
Hi all, Just wondering what people think about not using any link shorteners on the official Fedora twitter feed. Twitter actually passes all links in tweets through their own t.co/ <http://t.co/> link shortener, so using another one is just (IMHO) unnecessarily obfuscating the link from our followers on twitter. (twitter presents all t.co <http://t.co> links as the full text, but the link itself is t.co <http://t.co>) Looking back through the feed, the main link shortener being used is ow.ly <http://ow.ly>, which i assume is being done by whoever is using Hootsuite. cheers, ryanlerch -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org> List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On 11/11/2015 10:34 AM, Ryan Lerch wrote:
On 11/11/2015 10:03 AM, Chaoyi Zha wrote:
Hi Ryan,
I think the use of a link shortener is adequate for Twitter. This is because they have a character limit, and using a shortener greatly helps increase the amount of text you can have in a tweet. Twitter counts your link's characters even though it passes it through its own link gateway.
This is incorrect -- try crafting a new tweet on twitter.com with 115 characters, then add a link with more that 25 characters -- it will let you post it. All links on twitter go through the t.co link shortener.
cheers, ryanlerch
Cheers, Chaoyi
On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 at 19:01 Ryan Lerch rlerch@redhat.com wrote:
Hi all, Just wondering what people think about not using any link shorteners on the official Fedora twitter feed. Twitter actually passes all links in tweets through their own t.co/ <http://t.co/> link shortener, so using another one is just (IMHO) unnecessarily obfuscating the link from our followers on twitter. (twitter presents all t.co <http://t.co> links as the full text, but the link itself is t.co <http://t.co>) Looking back through the feed, the main link shortener being used is ow.ly <http://ow.ly>, which i assume is being done by whoever is using Hootsuite. cheers, ryanlerch -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org> List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
Also, have a look at this tweet:
https://twitter.com/fedora/status/664172103525146624
If you inspect the link in that tweet, (or copy the link address to see the href of it), you will see that the link is actaully t.co. So these links are passing through t.co, then redundantly redirecting on to ow.ly, then on to the actual site we want.
cheers, ryanlerch
Yes, I'm aware that it is passed through t.co. If it counts the links as the same amount of characters, we might still want to keep the shortened URLs for aesthetics, as long links don't look very good on mobile.
Unless you have a specific objection to using a shortener, I'm assuming.
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 7:48 PM Ryan Lerch rlerch@redhat.com wrote:
On 11/11/2015 10:34 AM, Ryan Lerch wrote:
On 11/11/2015 10:03 AM, Chaoyi Zha wrote:
Hi Ryan,
I think the use of a link shortener is adequate for Twitter. This is because they have a character limit, and using a shortener greatly helps increase the amount of text you can have in a tweet. Twitter counts your link's characters even though it passes it through its own link gateway.
This is incorrect -- try crafting a new tweet on twitter.com with 115 characters, then add a link with more that 25 characters -- it will let you post it. All links on twitter go through the t.co link shortener.
cheers, ryanlerch
Cheers, Chaoyi
On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 at 19:01 Ryan Lerch rlerch@redhat.com wrote:
Hi all,
Just wondering what people think about not using any link shorteners on the official Fedora twitter feed. Twitter actually passes all links in tweets through their own t.co/ link shortener, so using another one is just (IMHO) unnecessarily obfuscating the link from our followers on twitter. (twitter presents all t.co links as the full text, but the link itself is t.co)
Looking back through the feed, the main link shortener being used is ow.ly, which i assume is being done by whoever is using Hootsuite.
cheers, ryanlerch -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
Also, have a look at this tweet:
https://twitter.com/fedora/status/664172103525146624
If you inspect the link in that tweet, (or copy the link address to see the href of it), you will see that the link is actaully t.co. So these links are passing through t.co, then redundantly redirecting on to ow.ly, then on to the actual site we want.
cheers, ryanlerch -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On 11/11/2015 10:53 AM, Chaoyi Zha wrote:
Yes, I'm aware that it is passed through t.co http://t.co. If it counts the links as the same amount of characters, we might still want to keep the shortened URLs for aesthetics, as long links don't look very good on mobile.
IMHO, a full link is more aesthetically appealing than a bunch of random characters, and more usable too -- you know what you are clicking on before you click it. Twitter, even though it passes thrrough their shortener, will display a portion (if not all) of the link in the timeline, rather than the shortened link.
Unless you have a specific objection to using a shortener, I'm assuming.
my objections to using link shorteners are pretty much summed up by this article:
http://oleb.net/blog/2012/08/please-dont-use-url-shorteners-on-twitter/
regards, ryanlerch
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 7:48 PM Ryan Lerch <rlerch@redhat.com mailto:rlerch@redhat.com> wrote:
On 11/11/2015 10:34 AM, Ryan Lerch wrote:On 11/11/2015 10:03 AM, Chaoyi Zha wrote:Hi Ryan, I think the use of a link shortener is adequate for Twitter. This is because they have a character limit, and using a shortener greatly helps increase the amount of text you can have in a tweet. Twitter counts your link's characters even though it passes it through its own link gateway.This is incorrect -- try crafting a new tweet on twitter.com <http://twitter.com> with 115 characters, then add a link with more that 25 characters -- it will let you post it. All links on twitter go through the t.co <http://t.co> link shortener. cheers, ryanlerchCheers, Chaoyi On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 at 19:01 Ryan Lerch <rlerch@redhat.com <mailto:rlerch@redhat.com>> wrote: Hi all, Just wondering what people think about not using any link shorteners on the official Fedora twitter feed. Twitter actually passes all links in tweets through their own t.co/ <http://t.co/> link shortener, so using another one is just (IMHO) unnecessarily obfuscating the link from our followers on twitter. (twitter presents all t.co <http://t.co> links as the full text, but the link itself is t.co <http://t.co>) Looking back through the feed, the main link shortener being used is ow.ly <http://ow.ly>, which i assume is being done by whoever is using Hootsuite. cheers, ryanlerch -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org> List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketingAlso, have a look at this tweet: https://twitter.com/fedora/status/664172103525146624 If you inspect the link in that tweet, (or copy the link address to see the href of it), you will see that the link is actaully t.co <http://t.co>. So these links are passing through t.co <http://t.co>, then redundantly redirecting on to ow.ly <http://ow.ly>, then on to the actual site we want. cheers, ryanlerch -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org> List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
There is one reason for using ow.ly URL shortener and that is it allows the person posting via hootsuite to track engagement with a post. I would rather see a URL shortener that is fedora branded being used if possible.
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 8:02 PM Ryan Lerch rlerch@redhat.com wrote:
On 11/11/2015 10:53 AM, Chaoyi Zha wrote:
Yes, I'm aware that it is passed through t.co. If it counts the links as the same amount of characters, we might still want to keep the shortened URLs for aesthetics, as long links don't look very good on mobile.
IMHO, a full link is more aesthetically appealing than a bunch of random characters, and more usable too -- you know what you are clicking on before you click it. Twitter, even though it passes thrrough their shortener, will display a portion (if not all) of the link in the timeline, rather than the shortened link.
Unless you have a specific objection to using a shortener, I'm assuming.
my objections to using link shorteners are pretty much summed up by this article:
http://oleb.net/blog/2012/08/please-dont-use-url-shorteners-on-twitter/
regards, ryanlerch
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 7:48 PM Ryan Lerch rlerch@redhat.com wrote:
On 11/11/2015 10:34 AM, Ryan Lerch wrote:
On 11/11/2015 10:03 AM, Chaoyi Zha wrote:
Hi Ryan,
I think the use of a link shortener is adequate for Twitter. This is because they have a character limit, and using a shortener greatly helps increase the amount of text you can have in a tweet. Twitter counts your link's characters even though it passes it through its own link gateway.
This is incorrect -- try crafting a new tweet on twitter.com with 115 characters, then add a link with more that 25 characters -- it will let you post it. All links on twitter go through the t.co link shortener.
cheers, ryanlerch
Cheers, Chaoyi
On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 at 19:01 Ryan Lerch rlerch@redhat.com wrote:
Hi all,
Just wondering what people think about not using any link shorteners on the official Fedora twitter feed. Twitter actually passes all links in tweets through their own t.co/ link shortener, so using another one is just (IMHO) unnecessarily obfuscating the link from our followers on twitter. (twitter presents all t.co links as the full text, but the link itself is t.co)
Looking back through the feed, the main link shortener being used is ow.ly, which i assume is being done by whoever is using Hootsuite.
cheers, ryanlerch -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
Also, have a look at this tweet:
https://twitter.com/fedora/status/664172103525146624
If you inspect the link in that tweet, (or copy the link address to see the href of it), you will see that the link is actaully t.co. So these links are passing through t.co, then redundantly redirecting on to ow.ly, then on to the actual site we want.
cheers, ryanlerch -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
-- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On 11/10/2015 08:33 PM, Lord Drachenblut wrote:
There is one reason for using ow.ly http://ow.ly URL shortener and that is it allows the person posting via hootsuite to track engagement with a post. I would rather see a URL shortener that is fedora branded being used if possible.
This was the major point I was thinking of mentioning. Personally, I feel like link shorteners are only necessary if they're being utilized to collect statistics and metrics. Judging by the context of this thread, do we know who has the keys to the Hootsuite? I feel like social media engagement statistics are something that could be an invaluable resource to gauging which of our social media posts are effective and which ones aren't as engaged.
If this *is* already happening, then the above paragraph can be disregarded. In the case that statistics and metrics are being tracked, I personally vote to abstain from using link shorteners except where information about engagements and interactions are actually being utilized.
-- Cheers, Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com
Hi all,
On 11/10/2015 08:33 PM, Lord Drachenblut wrote:
There is one reason for using ow.ly http://ow.ly URL shortener and that is it allows the person posting via hootsuite to track engagement with a post. I would rather see a URL shortener that is fedora branded being used if possible.
This was the major point I was thinking of mentioning. Personally, I feel like link shorteners are only necessary if they're being utilized to collect statistics and metrics. Judging by the context of this thread, do we know who has the keys to the Hootsuite? I feel like social media engagement statistics are something that could be an invaluable resource to gauging which of our social media posts are effective and which ones aren't as engaged.
So, I am not aware of who holds the keys to Hootsuite, but for stats tracking this would not be required. If we would just use t.co, Wordpress statistics that we have should see the items coming in just fine through the http referrer header.
If this *is* already happening, then the above paragraph can be disregarded. In the case that statistics and metrics are being tracked, I personally vote to abstain from using link shorteners except where information about engagements and interactions are actually being utilized.
-- Cheers, Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com
With kind regards, Patrick Uiterwijk Fedora Infra
On 11/10/2015 08:58 PM, Patrick Uiterwijk wrote:
Hi all,
On 11/10/2015 08:33 PM, Lord Drachenblut wrote:
There is one reason for using ow.ly http://ow.ly URL shortener and that is it allows the person posting via hootsuite to track engagement with a post. I would rather see a URL shortener that is fedora branded being used if possible.
This was the major point I was thinking of mentioning. Personally, I feel like link shorteners are only necessary if they're being utilized to collect statistics and metrics. Judging by the context of this thread, do we know who has the keys to the Hootsuite? I feel like social media engagement statistics are something that could be an invaluable resource to gauging which of our social media posts are effective and which ones aren't as engaged.
So, I am not aware of who holds the keys to Hootsuite, but for stats tracking this would not be required. If we would just use t.co, Wordpress statistics that we have should see the items coming in just fine through the http referrer header.
With this in mind, personally, I feel like link shorteners are not necessary then. If we can get the stats, I personally think it's not a bad idea to avoid them.
-- Cheers, Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com
With this in mind, personally, I feel like link shorteners are not necessary then. If we can get the stats, I personally think it's not a bad idea to avoid them.
Two small remarks: 1. I am personally also in favor of using t.co instead of another shortener for security reasons (visibility etc). 2. Per the t.co support page[1], t.co is ONLY used when tweets are posted through twitter.com. I don't know how tweets are currently placed, but that should be taken into account if it's not through twitter.com.
[1]: https://support.twitter.com/articles/109623
With kind regards, Patrick Uiterwijk Fedora Infra
On 11/11/2015 12:11 PM, Patrick Uiterwijk wrote:
With this in mind, personally, I feel like link shorteners are not necessary then. If we can get the stats, I personally think it's not a bad idea to avoid them.
Two small remarks:
- I am personally also in favor of using t.co instead of another shortener
for security reasons (visibility etc). 2. Per the t.co support page[1], t.co is ONLY used when tweets are posted through twitter.com. I don't know how tweets are currently placed, but that should be taken into account if it's not through twitter.com.
Yeah, i read that too -- i think that by twitter.com they mean twitter, because in practise, every tweet i post to twitter is wrapped in t.co -- doesnt matter if i use the android client, the corebird 3rd party client, the webapp, or via a python script -- all links are t.co/
cheers, ryanlerch
With kind regards, Patrick Uiterwijk Fedora Infra
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 9:11 PM, Patrick Uiterwijk puiterwijk@redhat.com wrote:
With this in mind, personally, I feel like link shorteners are not necessary then. If we can get the stats, I personally think it's not a bad idea to avoid them.
Two small remarks:
- I am personally also in favor of using t.co instead of another
shortener for security reasons (visibility etc). 2. Per the t.co support page[1], t.co is ONLY used when tweets are posted through twitter.com. I don't know how tweets are currently placed, but that should be taken into account if it's not through twitter.com.
Which means things would be difficult, because you can't time tweets to a certain schedule using Twitter.com. Sometimes that's essential, especially for a globally distributed community like Fedora.
With kind regards, Patrick Uiterwijk Fedora Infra -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On 11/11/2015 11:58 AM, Patrick Uiterwijk wrote:
Hi all,
On 11/10/2015 08:33 PM, Lord Drachenblut wrote:
There is one reason for using ow.ly http://ow.ly URL shortener and that is it allows the person posting via hootsuite to track engagement with a post. I would rather see a URL shortener that is fedora branded being used if possible.
This was the major point I was thinking of mentioning. Personally, I feel like link shorteners are only necessary if they're being utilized to collect statistics and metrics. Judging by the context of this thread, do we know who has the keys to the Hootsuite? I feel like social media engagement statistics are something that could be an invaluable resource to gauging which of our social media posts are effective and which ones aren't as engaged.
So, I am not aware of who holds the keys to Hootsuite, but for stats tracking this would not be required. If we would just use t.co, Wordpress statistics that we have should see the items coming in just fine through the http referrer header.
If this *is* already happening, then the above paragraph can be disregarded. In the case that statistics and metrics are being tracked, I personally vote to abstain from using link shorteners except where information about engagements and interactions are actually being utilized.
-- Cheers, Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com
With kind regards, Patrick Uiterwijk Fedora Infra
Yeah, not sure who owns the keys, or uses it either -- maybe jzb?
Also, it appears that it is only being used to post to twitter, as the posts with ow.ly shortened links only appear on Twitter, not facebook and g+, So even if the reasoning is to track engagements there is no reason why, if you wanted to do this, that you can do it in the twitter interface.
Twitter now gives you quite detailed insights on posts, for example the post that i linked to eariler in the thread has these stats:
Impressions 3,607 Total engagements 175 Link clicks 129 Detail expands 18 Retweets 12 Profile clicks 10 Likes 5 Replies 1
Google+ and Facebook also do this to some extent too, so IMHO no real need to track in another third party propertiary application.
cheers, ryanlerch
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 8:44 PM, Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/10/2015 08:33 PM, Lord Drachenblut wrote:
There is one reason for using ow.ly http://ow.ly URL shortener and that is it allows the person posting via hootsuite to track engagement with a post. I would rather see a URL shortener that is fedora branded being used if possible.
This was the major point I was thinking of mentioning. Personally, I feel like link shorteners are only necessary if they're being utilized to collect statistics and metrics. Judging by the context of this thread, do we know who has the keys to the Hootsuite? I feel like social media engagement statistics are something that could be an invaluable resource to gauging which of our social media posts are effective and which ones aren't as engaged.
That would be me, actually (and Ruth Suehle as well). Pushing links through the ow.ly link shortener does enable us to track and follow engagements on individual tweets if we want.
If this *is* already happening, then the above paragraph can be disregarded. In the case that statistics and metrics are being tracked, I personally vote to abstain from using link shorteners except where information about engagements and interactions are actually being utilized.
I am not sure what the main objection here is. Aesthetics of an unshortened link seems to be one selling point, but when I look at links from some database-driven content management system sites, I don't see that as a particularly strong reason. Also, while Twitter does automatically shorten though t.co, in practice I have found that the longer the URL, the more likely someone's outdated Twitter client or poor use of Twitter RTs and MTs will mangle the URL.
Shortening it first is a better practice, in my experience.
That said, using HootSuite's ow.ly is kind of sad, and whenever I can, I try to use the Red Hat-branded shortener via bit.ly. This works only on redhat.com domain sites, though, and metrics for engagement have to be tracked separately, so it's aesthetically nice, but kind of a pain, too.
-- Cheers, Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com
[snip]
Peace, Brian
On 11/13/2015 10:05 PM, Brian Proffitt wrote:
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 8:44 PM, Justin W. Flory <jflory7@gmail.com mailto:jflory7@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/10/2015 08:33 PM, Lord Drachenblut wrote: There is one reason for using ow.ly <http://ow.ly> <http://ow.ly> URL shortener and that is it allows the person posting via hootsuite to track engagement with a post. I would rather see a URL shortener that is fedora branded being used if possible. This was the major point I was thinking of mentioning. Personally, I feel like link shorteners are only necessary if they're being utilized to collect statistics and metrics. Judging by the context of this thread, do we know who has the keys to the Hootsuite? I feel like social media engagement statistics are something that could be an invaluable resource to gauging which of our social media posts are effective and which ones aren't as engaged.That would be me, actually (and Ruth Suehle as well). Pushing links through the ow.ly http://ow.ly link shortener does enable us to track and follow engagements on individual tweets if we want.
Because twitter sends all links through their link shortener, this is possible to track and follow engagements via twitter's web interface too. I don't see the point of pushing all links through two different link shorteners that both track and follow engagements, especially to the detriment of the usability, consistency & readability of our feed overall.
If this *is* already happening, then the above paragraph can be disregarded. In the case that statistics and metrics are being tracked, I personally vote to abstain from using link shorteners except where information about engagements and interactions are actually being utilized.I am not sure what the main objection here is. Aesthetics of an unshortened link seems to be one selling point, but when I look at links from some database-driven content management system sites, I don't see that as a particularly strong reason.
I have several objections. Usability is one -- the latter part of a full URL (the part that a database driven CMS may automatically produce), is of less importance than the domain, IMHO. Personally, I know I will make a decision on what to click on based on the domain, and tend to click on shortened links a lot less. This part of the previously linked article sums this up perfectly IMHO -- http://oleb.net/blog/2012/08/please-dont-use-url-shorteners-on-twitter/#urls...
Also, while Twitter does automatically shorten though t.co http://t.co, in practice I have found that the longer the URL, the more likely someone's outdated Twitter client or poor use of Twitter RTs and MTs will mangle the URL.
I am a little unclear on what you mean here. Do older twitter clients mangle URLs when posting a tweet to the Fedora feed? or when people read the tweet on an older Twitter client. Also, aren't twitter retweets automatically generated by twitter (or most clients) when you press the retweet button? or are you talking about the old practice of prefixing "RT" in front of a copied tweet that was done before twitter implemented the retweet functionality over 5 years ago?
Shortening it first is a better practice, in my experience.
That said, using HootSuite's ow.ly http://ow.ly is kind of sad, and whenever I can, I try to use the Red Hat-branded shortener via bit.ly http://bit.ly. This works only on redhat.com http://redhat.com domain sites, though, and metrics for engagement have to be tracked separately, so it's aesthetically nice, but kind of a pain, too.
This brings up another issue: consistency on our twitter feed -- some links are shortened with ow.ly, others are not. Not everyone has access to, or uses hootsuite.
regards, ryanlerch
-- Cheers, Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com <mailto:jflory7@gmail.com>[snip]
Peace, Brian
-- Brian Proffitt Principal Community Analyst Open Source and Standards @TheTechScribe 574.383.9BKP
On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 7:54 AM, Ryan Lerch rlerch@redhat.com wrote:
On 11/13/2015 10:05 PM, Brian Proffitt wrote:
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 8:44 PM, Justin W. Flory < jflory7@gmail.com jflory7@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/10/2015 08:33 PM, Lord Drachenblut wrote:
There is one reason for using ow.ly http://ow.ly URL shortener and that is it allows the person posting via hootsuite to track engagement with a post. I would rather see a URL shortener that is fedora branded being used if possible.
This was the major point I was thinking of mentioning. Personally, I feel like link shorteners are only necessary if they're being utilized to collect statistics and metrics. Judging by the context of this thread, do we know who has the keys to the Hootsuite? I feel like social media engagement statistics are something that could be an invaluable resource to gauging which of our social media posts are effective and which ones aren't as engaged.
That would be me, actually (and Ruth Suehle as well). Pushing links through the ow.ly link shortener does enable us to track and follow engagements on individual tweets if we want.
Because twitter sends all links through their link shortener, this is possible to track and follow engagements via twitter's web interface too. I don't see the point of pushing all links through two different link shorteners that both track and follow engagements, especially to the detriment of the usability, consistency & readability of our feed overall.
If this *is* already happening, then the above paragraph can be disregarded. In the case that statistics and metrics are being tracked, I personally vote to abstain from using link shorteners except where information about engagements and interactions are actually being utilized.
I am not sure what the main objection here is. Aesthetics of an unshortened link seems to be one selling point, but when I look at links from some database-driven content management system sites, I don't see that as a particularly strong reason.
I have several objections. Usability is one -- the latter part of a full URL (the part that a database driven CMS may automatically produce), is of less importance than the domain, IMHO. Personally, I know I will make a decision on what to click on based on the domain, and tend to click on shortened links a lot less. This part of the previously linked article sums this up perfectly IMHO -- http://oleb.net/blog/2012/08/please-dont-use-url-shorteners-on-twitter/#urls...
Also, while Twitter does automatically shorten though t.co, in practice I have found that the longer the URL, the more likely someone's outdated Twitter client or poor use of Twitter RTs and MTs will mangle the URL.
I am a little unclear on what you mean here. Do older twitter clients mangle URLs when posting a tweet to the Fedora feed? or when people read the tweet on an older Twitter client. Also, aren't twitter retweets automatically generated by twitter (or most clients) when you press the retweet button? or are you talking about the old practice of prefixing "RT" in front of a copied tweet that was done before twitter implemented the retweet functionality over 5 years ago?
Just because that functionality is there, does not mean it is consistently used. I have seen the old-style RT practice still used and still mangling links.
Shortening it first is a better practice, in my experience.
That said, using HootSuite's ow.ly is kind of sad, and whenever I can, I try to use the Red Hat-branded shortener via bit.ly. This works only on redhat.com domain sites, though, and metrics for engagement have to be tracked separately, so it's aesthetically nice, but kind of a pain, too.
This brings up another issue: consistency on our twitter feed -- some links are shortened with ow.ly, others are not. Not everyone has access to, or uses hootsuite.
Well, this is an easy fix: tweets from any source should not use link shorteners. Hootsuite users can make that transition with ease and still maintain analytics of tweets.
regards, ryanlerch
[Snip]
BKP
I believe that would be Brian Proffitt who does.
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 8:44 PM Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/10/2015 08:33 PM, Lord Drachenblut wrote:
There is one reason for using ow.ly http://ow.ly URL shortener and that is it allows the person posting via hootsuite to track engagement with a post. I would rather see a URL shortener that is fedora branded being used if possible.
This was the major point I was thinking of mentioning. Personally, I feel like link shorteners are only necessary if they're being utilized to collect statistics and metrics. Judging by the context of this thread, do we know who has the keys to the Hootsuite? I feel like social media engagement statistics are something that could be an invaluable resource to gauging which of our social media posts are effective and which ones aren't as engaged.
If this *is* already happening, then the above paragraph can be disregarded. In the case that statistics and metrics are being tracked, I personally vote to abstain from using link shorteners except where information about engagements and interactions are actually being utilized.
-- Cheers, Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com
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Ryan Lerch píše v St 11. 11. 2015 v 10:01 +1000:
Hi all,
Just wondering what people think about not using any link shorteners on the official Fedora twitter feed. Twitter actually passes all links in tweets through their own t.co/ link shortener, so using another one is just (IMHO) unnecessarily obfuscating the link from our followers on twitter. (twitter presents all t.co links as the full text, but the link itself is t.co)
Looking back through the feed, the main link shortener being used is ow.ly, which i assume is being done by whoever is using Hootsuite.
Ditch it. I stopped using bitly when Twitter introduced t.co which was a long time ago. There is no need to use them unless you want to collect statistical data as someone has already mentioned. But Twitter provides basic statistics nowadays as well.
Jiri
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Brian Proffitt -
Chaoyi Zha -
Jiri Eischmann -
Justin W. Flory -
Lord Drachenblut -
Patrick Uiterwijk -
Ryan Lerch