Twitter Tools: use bit.ly with Hootsuite instead of ow.ly

NOTE: this post is mainly relevant only to people who use a twitter tool called Hootsuite. There is also some additional information in the Wiki about URL shortening.

Many Twitter users like a posting tool called Hootsuite. A serious problem with Hootsuite is that it shortens URLs with a service called ow.ly. Ow.ly is very bad because it framejacks the target link.

(Framejacking is when one website tries to place another website inside of an HTML frame. Ow.ly calls this a "social bar" -- basically an annoying toolbar at the top of the linked-to page that masks the URL of the page you're on. See bottom of this post for a more detailed explanation about why framejacking is bad.)

Despite many complaints, the company hasn't fixed ow.ly. But now there is a way to use better URL shortening tools like bit.ly with Hootsuite.

You need The Greasemonkey Firefox extension for it to work. After you have grease monkey installed, go here and click "install". After that, you should be able to use bit.ly with Hootsuite.

Bit.ly also tracks clicks. If you want to see how many clicks your links have gotten, login to bit.ly before using it, or just insert "info/" into the path of the URL like this:

Original shortened URL:
http://bit.ly/irN7g

Stats page for number of public clicks:
http://bit.ly/info/irN7g

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* For anyone who wants to know why framejacking is bad, I've copied some points I've made elsewhere and pasted them below:

The problems from a webmaster’s perspective:

• A framejacker tries to “own” your content by putting it on their own URL.
• When the visitor copies and pastes the URL to link to your site, they copy the framejacking URL. Many things can go wrong, such as the framejacking website going off-line or out of business permanently or the visitor browsing to another page and then trying to copy the URL (which never changes, so the link is wrong)

The problems from a visitor’s perspective:

• Framejacking URLs hijack the browser — it’s very difficult to know exactly where you are on the web without being able to see the URL.
• When you browse to a different page, the URL doesn’t change. If you want to copy a URL, you have to popout the frame, which is something that many people don’t know how to do.
• Basically, from a visitor’s perspective, it’s about controlling your own browser. Websites should never touch the URL (framejacking) or the status bar text. Both of them are annoying and are security risks.

I've spent about a year trying to get Hootsuite (or its users) to stop framejacking with ow.ly, and I'm going to continue the battle here :)

I've just taken some screenshots of some of the anti-ow.ly conversations going around social media sites. Sending ow.ly links is sure to annoy many followers, and some people (including myself) don't click on them or retweet them.

There are three easy solutions to the ow.ly problem -- the first 2 solutions still use Hootsuite:

• Use the greasemonkey extension that shortens with bit.ly
• manually shorten URLs with the bit.ly bookmarklet
• or, switch to CoTweet

Bit.ly is alco coming out with "pro" accounts soon, which should have extra features...