Twitter is a great way to share useful bits of information with your colleagues while at the same time defining your personal brand and letting the world know that you exist. One feature that I discovered today was the way that the system handles long URLs.
I was surprised to find that Twitter automatically shortened my URL.
The automatic “bitlying” of URLs is unexpected and a bit jarring for the first-time user. My first thought: “Where did my URL go?” Then, when I tried to replicate the effect with another URL, it didn’t shorten. I tried several different URLs to no avail. What are the factors that cause a URL to be automatically shortened? The complete obliqueness of this feature can cause frustration for the user.
The positive aspect of this is enhanced interface simplicity: The system simply predicts when it thinks a URL should be shortened, and takes care of the shortening for you. The auto-shortening feature parallels Twitter’s modus operandi of absolute simplicity.
But every positive has a negative: The system can’t read the user’s mind. Common use cases exist wherein the user would want enhanced control over URL shortening, especially in a business environment.
The obvious benefit of an unshortened URL is that anyone who sees the address can recognize the site name, which gains trust and leads to more clicks. So let’s say your company, CompanyName, has a new product that they want to showcase, the Widget. If the new products page exists a couple of folders deep within your domain, would your URL get shortened? It depends. URL example 1 (http://www.companyname.com/introducing-the-wonder-widget) would get bitlyed, while URL example 2 (http://www.companyname.com/wonderwidget) would not. Even in example 2, Twitter displays an ellipsis (…) instead of the wonderwidget text. It’s hard to imagine a business that would want bitlying to happen, as displaying the brand name in the URL would be critical. The user may also prefer to display the entire product name in example 2 rather than the ellipsis, but Twitter’s current system seems to make this impossible.
The user may wish to control the way that Twitter shortens URLs, e.g., in order to display domain names for branding purposes.
An easy solution for this would be to add auto-shortening options to the Settings page. An easier solution would be to maintain a default setting of not shortening URLs that match the URL listed in the user’s profile. The second option would be more in line with Twitter’s brand of being automatic and not requiring the addition of more settings, while satisfying the case of the business professional.
What do you think? Let me know.
