On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 7:54 AM, Ryan Lerch <rlerch(a)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(a)gmail.com>
jflory7(a)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/#u...
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