Use of Link shorteners on Twitter

[Ryan Lerch]

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 at 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