Twitter’s New Link Tracking is No Good

by Michael Zhang on September 4, 2009

Twitter changed how links work recently, so now when you click a link the first thing that actually loads is something like:

http://twitter.com/link_click_count?url=STUFF

I don’t like it.

First off, it’s messier. Instead of clicking through normal links now we’re getting redirected for internal links. That’s weird.

Second, it puts another level of failure and slowness between users and the places they’re trying to reach via the links. It looks like the redirection/tracking is only happening for internal links, so if twitter is down then the link would probably be down anyway, but I feel like things are a little slower anyway with the intermediate step.

Hmm…

Tags: change, link, thoughts, tracking, twitter, url

Viewing 2 Comments

receipt printer 2 months ago 1 point
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You really have a good point. But I think, Twitter have a good reason for this.. I think it's more on in business purposes..

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1 /people/streetwear000/ /people/streetwear000/following/

Pingyao tour 2 weeks ago 1 point
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Great post, what you said is really helpful to me. I can't agree with you anymore. I have been talking with my friend about, he though it is really interesting as well. Keep up with your good work, I would come back to you.

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1 /people/bulin/ /people/bulin/following/

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