Use of Link shorteners on Twitter

[Brian Proffitt]

On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 7:54 AM, Ryan Lerch <rlerch at 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 at gmail.com>
> jflory7 at 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-have-meaning
>


>
> 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



-- 
Brian Proffitt
Principal Community Analyst
Open Source and Standards
@TheTechScribe
574.383.9BKP
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/attachments/20151113/f20a7a0f/attachment-0001.html>