25
Nov
2009
Five reasons to post direct links on Twitter
Link shorteners are part of life. I don’t mind them, and I use them. But how many times have you clicked on a link in a tweet and, instead of taking you to the advertised page, you are taken to a page with another link? What about a link that takes you to a page with a little, extra bar at the top? I find these pretty annoying, and here’s why you should eradicate such practices from your Twitter repertoire.
- It’s dishonest. If you clipped out a coupon for a free sundae and brought it to the restaurant listed on the coupon, only to be given another coupon for the same thing at another restaurant, wouldn’t you feel a little cheated? Why do this with links? If you want people to visit your website, put original content on it. If there’s another website you want them to visit, give them a direct link to that website.
- It makes more work. You click a link and, instead of being taken where you expect to be taken, you are taken to a page with a link. And when you click the new link, it opens the page in a new tab/window, so you have to close the first one. This is not endearing in the least.
- Bookmarking becomes problematic. If you click on a link and are taken to a page with an ow.ly bar at the top, for example, and you try to bookmark it, you’re not bookmarking the page you think you are. You’re bookmarking the ow.ly URL.
- Navigating becomes a pain. You click on a link that takes you to a page with the ow.ly bar at the top. You click around the site a bit, and arrive at a page you find interesting. You know you want to bookmark the page, but you can’t with that bar there. So you close the bar. Suddenly, you’re no longer at the page you navigated to. You’re back at the original page, with the urge to kill growing inside your heart.
- There are better ways to do it. URL shorteners like bit.ly can track link clicks without ruining the experience. If you want people to visit your site, and you’re not going to post original content, then at least put up a discussion or some information about the content you’re going to link them to. People will respect you more.
I usually find links to intermediate link pages to be rather annoying. I don’t mind much if there’s some added value such as commentary, ratings, related links, or information provided by the URL-shortening service (e.g., the full URL or the MIME type of the linked content), but repeated links to useless pages just make me want to stop following someone’s links.
I have mixed feelings about toolbar frames. As with intermediate link pages, I think they do not often seem useful or interesting to me, although they may be for people who are able to use more of their features (which may require site-specific accounts).