I hate ow.ly

Hi everyone,

We realize not everyone likes the frame on ow.ly links.

We will be making a change that allows users to turn this header on or off.

Lots of users are using the frame on ow.ly links to display their AdSense ads and thereby earn revenue from their tweets... but we realize that not everyone will want to do this.

Hope this helps. Thanks for the feedback.

I've written a blog post with a longer explanation on why I think frame-based URL redirection is a bad idea:
http://is.gd/j5v3

I don't think the point of this forum is to pontificate on our individual opinions of how others should be using twitter and url shortening services.

I think HootSuite can easily make everyone happy by making the frame an option, either on the part of the website visitor who sees the frame, or upon the twitter account holder that posted the owl.ly link.

I'd pay to remove the frame

If it bothers you install adblock+ and configure it properly. Don' t pontificate to the rest of us what we find a useful way to monetize. Twitter is what the user makes of it, and there are no set rules to it. I wish people would mind their own business instead of attempting to remove functionality of a product.

A suggestion is to configure ow.ly with a checkbox that any user (not just hootsuite users) can select, that will set a cookie on the machine to ignore the ow.ly frames. Tinyurl does this in theory with allowing the user to request all tinyurl show in preview mode.

And for the record, my vote is to keep it the way you have it. I think this service is one of the least intrusive ad methods for twitter abound.

PS Per link stats w/ referrers would be icing on the cake.

I am still having issues with Ow.ly showing stats. In fact my Tweets with Ow.ly links say there is no Ow.ly present. Bad Ow.ly.

Hi Rick,

Can you let us know:

1) Which twitter profile this is occurring on?
2) Which specific tweets aren't showing stats?

Thanks for helping us troubleshoot this.

For the second time. twitter.com/adsymetrix
My last tweet about viewing my show on Youtube doesn't show up as an Ow.ly link

I don't really mind the iframe. First of all, the system is free, so if this is the cost I don't mind so much. Second, as an individual already said here, have it a paid option.

I have decided to stick with http://twitterfeed.com for all my RSS feeds for now. They allow you to choose which URL shortening service you want to use. I use http://tr.im because it gives you nice click stats without any annoying frames like ow.ly.

I'm with hm on this one, I refuse to annoy my followers with ow.ly frames.

What are you on about? ow.ly doesn't hijack your address bar. The page you view when you click an ow.ly link isn't the actual CNN page or whatever you're looking at. the "bar" you see is a page on ow.ly's site, and the CNN page, for example, is the frame.

You're comparing ow.ly to sites like TinyURL, and they're similar in the sense that they create a short URL to share with people, but they differ vastly in the way they display the pages. TinyURL and other sites simply redirect to the actual page, itself. ow.ly does NOT do this, which is why your address bar does not match the page you're trying to view.

Please, before you make accusations, try knowing what you're talking about.

You still fail to understand that ow.ly is NOT a redirect service. The bar IS ow.ly, not a frame. Look at the source code of any ow.ly page, you'll see that the frame element is everything BELOW the bar.

Then there are two obvious solutions:

1) Stop clicking on ow.ly links if they're genuinely that much of a hassle for you

or

2) Unfollow people that choose to use ow.ly

You have to remember that Twitter is an entirely opt-in service. You choose whose tweets you want to see. And if they're going to use ow.ly, you either ignore them or remove them. It really is simple.

To complain just doesn't make sense. There's simply no logic in it. HootSuite has chosen their method of monetizing Twitter. You aren't required to take part if you don't want to, and I genuinely doubt that HootSuite is going to change their niche market because a very small minority of their users don't care for the design.

OH ok that's the frame problem with Owly's to ning.com social networks, I see.

I must agree that adding a frame is bad behaviour in general.

Did ow.ly miss the whole diggbar brewhaha? Check it out, they were doing exactly what ow.ly does and the internet ripped their face off till they promised to change.

This was filed 2 months ago. Any updates on how and when we can permanently full-frame redirects instead of the frames?

Hi all,

Paid accounts will have the option to turn off the ow.ly toolbar entirely, if they wish.

We are working out our pricing plans and features for paid accounts. When these are ready to be launched, we'll let everyone know.

Thanks!

@fearphage Hardly. The end user can opt-out of X person's tweets.

As I've stated before, HootSuite/ow.ly is not for everybody. If you don't like it, ignore the links or unfollow people who post them.

You are NOT HootSuite/ow.ly's target audience, so it's highly unlikely that they'll cater to the people who only wish to complain when there are plenty of other complete redirect URL shorteners out there. HootSuit/ow.ly's target audience is people who want to track link clicks, as well as make a little extra cash through AdSense.

Here's a script I made that removes the frame in an extreme fashion (for chrome and opera). There is also a script for firefox, safari, and ie as well but it still fully loads the ow.ly pages unfortunately.

Enjoy!

Also, since Hootsuite was down for maintenance last night, all of our Twitter links stopped working. I think this is reason enough for us to stop using Hootsuite, as we can't have interruptions like that. I've never seen tinyurl go down for maintenance.

I use Hootsuite to schedule tweets, manage multiple accounts, rss to tweet and deal with multiple twitter accounts. Unfortunately I don't have time to visit 17 services to get everything done, so by default I use ow.ly to shorten. Less time is spent on the stats.

I can't foresee paying for the service if I can't rely on my links (and service) actually being available most of the time. Hootsuite has pretty frequent downtime, and this is disappointing.

I am with hm on this one.

I use Hootsuite entirely for the Hootlet, i.e. a bookmarklet that lets me quickly and easily tweet websites without having to copy the URL and paste it into my desktop twitter client (Nambu in my case).

I like the Hootlet because 1) it supports multiple twitter accounts and 2) that's one cute owl. I dislike the Hootlet because of ow.ly framed redirects ...for all the reasons brought up by hm.

I will abandon the Hootlet if and when I find another twitter bookmarklet that supports multiple accounts (Twitlet comes close if you make two separate Twitlets, one for each of your accounts, but it doesnt automatically insert the link, you have type in the text '#link')

...unless HootSuite gets there first by allowing me to remove the ow.ly redirect frames without having to have a paid account. Even that is a problem since when twitter users see an ow.ly link they won't know if the person who created it has disabled the frame.

Ideally HootSuite will get rid of the redirect frame altogether. Until then it's Twitlet for me.

I agree with hm and Karen. No more ow.ly URls for me! tr.im - here I come!

FYI bit.ly has a great bookmarklet similar to Hootlet here:
http://bit.ly/

Jeff,

This exceeds my expectations for addressing the feedback you got on this topic. Thanks for going above and beyond (while working on HS 2.0 BTW). Impressive!

Well this doesn't really solve the problem though, does it? It helps the techy geeks remove it without installing some random extension. However, the average computer user will never look to the right side and click the X. I don't see how this is benefiting the user unless they're some hardcore Twitter junkie. "See that little dropdown" - that no one is going to use besides the daily ow.ly user (which in that case why would they be hiding it?).

Shouldn't this Ow.ly bar never be there in the first place? If it was a visitors first visit to a site, isn't bookmarking that page linking to a never ending Ow.ly link? This is the entire point in why the frame is pointless. Isn't there anyway to add a script before the page loads to it actually is still intact but it displays the real URL. I see that as a win-win situation. Althought I Have no idea how to code such a thing, but it seems simple enough. [If not, then oh well I thought I could give an idea I had]

More customization such as if you want the bar on the top or the bottom. But like pointed out it would only be on the page you clicked it on - going to another page would remove it and the user would forget about it. This is almost like pushing ow.ly to anyone clicking my links to not enjoy the experience and be forced to close the window - and losing possible more viewing. Not to mention confusing the visitor by wondering why it's Ow.ly and not "so and so website". The same problem happens with Full-page ads where they load and the user is confused why the page isn't what they were looking for.

Right, I can type my own - but that's besides the point. It's mainly a rant on ow.ly and the bar/URL not being "invisible" in the process of the click. As if http://weirdu.rlhere isn't already confusing enough for my visitors to click wondering why it isn't a real link. (Pretty sure there are many many twitter users who aren't tech savy) Until there's a default way to use Ow.ly and redirecting directly to my page url, I don't see any reason why I should even consider it.

As mentioned before, the problem with the cookie is that I clear all cookies every time I close my browser, so I'm still going to see the toolbar every day.

I'm just going to write a Firefox extension to block all these fake toolbars from ow.ly, viigo, etc.. That will solve it.

By the way, even those famous people that Hootsuite advertises on their front page like Steve Case and Womens Wear Daily don't use ow.ly -- they use bit.ly or cli.gs with Hootsuite. (Some of the others don't seem to use Hootsuite anymore.)

It also might be bad for SEO to point those cloaked links at websites. Search engines see one thing, visitors see another. It's not inconceivable to trigger cloaking detectors if you link to a site with cloaked links on a mass scale.

Glad it's disableable. Just wish I didn't have to disable it for ow.ly, and digg, and facebook, etc etc etc. Maybe you guys should all come up with a universal opt-out of some sort.

Oh man, I just saw this and new to this hootsuite. Frame Hijacking is BAD. I may have to discontinue use of hootsuite. I clear cookies everytime I close browser so a cookie wont work for me. Sorry guys have to agree with hm here. I would disable that function completely.

Maybe make an option in settings for those of us who dont like to send the frame thing to our followers to use a different url shortener. Would make both parties happy I think.

I would love to support HootSuite, it would be great if you offered other url shortening options like bit.ly.

HootSuite's "solution" isn't really one, for several reasons.

1) A per-user, per-computer setting is way too intrusive, and not at all discoverable.
2) There's still no way to ensure the link goes to a safe destination.
3) ow.ly has such a bad reputation as a link hijacker that even if frame removal could be set globally by the person sending the link, readers would still be unable to trust it.

I realize HootSuite needs a business model. It's just a shame that the best browser-based Twitter client relies on an intrusive frame for link shortening as that model.

Please: Offer a paid client that allows me to use true link-shortening services.

I've moved our organization's twitter account to CoTweet due to this problem. The stats aren't as good but I feel that it's worth it to get rid of the bar. They use bit.ly and have per link stats.

We just moved from HootSuite to CoTweet because of the framing issue and CoTweet has bit.ly built in. Even in my personal Twittering I see comments that people won't click on ow.ly links because of framing. I'm afraid that the reputation has gotten so bad that it is no longer a viable option for business. Too bad as I really feel that HootSuite has so much promise.

@james, Doug: CoTweet is great for sending out tweets, but isn't really set up for monitoring and reading friends and groups. So it's back to TweetDeck or Mixero until ow.ly goes away.

Hi,

I googled ow.ly and got this link. I have only used getsatisfaction for "Sunbelt Software", so this is a first time for HootSuite. A friend sent me an ow.ly link and I went a-googling.

Just some feedback. I don't click on short URLs (like http:// ow.ly/k7c1) or any URL which I don't know or don't trust. There is way too much malware, adware, and browser/application/machine hijacking going on. I want verifiable, trustworthy links.

It seems to me that using a frame to hijack the browser is potentially compounding a browser's vulnerabilities. And like IE7 and IE8 need more vulnerabilities. And, BTW, I don't use twitter. I am not big on social technology (even though I am an ex-microsoftie). I use it very selectively.

I have nothing personal against HootSuite. Heck, I did not know about ow.ly or HootSuite until less than an hour ago. I am just cautious.

--Jerry

I personally have no issues popping open bit.ly and customizing my xurl in another tab first. But I don't see other xurl services being incorporated into HS. No biggie though.

Cheers

Gee, what a deal -- if people learn how your unethical toolbar/frame works, then they might be able to figure out how to disable it.

Stop acting unethically. Do the right thing.

The problem is only half solved. You designed the "solution" deliberately so people wouldn't find it. I had to check back with Jeff's post to find it.

If you're serious about this, make it more obvious.

The link hijacking blocks uniques to your website if this matters to you.

was so happy to find hootsuite.
and now so sad to have to leave due to poor link shortening practices...

don't you guys see that you are destroying your own company with a short-sighted approach?

Displaying the Hoot pane at the top of every page linked to by an ow.ly url is ANNOYING and hides part of the page. I never read what it say - just close it. When I retweet ow.ly links I convert them to some other URL shortener.

I want to try the iPhone app and was if it was free to try but won't be if I cannot change the URL shortener.

ANNOYING.

When I first saw the ow.ly bar, I was annoyed, then was persuaded when I read that "95% of users love the ow.ly bar's utility.". With over 1000 hits to two articles and no change in rating, tweets, sharing etc., I now believe that that quote is really clever marketing so that the bar can promote Hootsuite. I don't want the ow.ly bar on my articles. If you really want the bar available, make it a default, though give us a setting to remove it if we so choose. Others have mentioned CoTweet so I'll have to see if it works for me.

Yes, I wish I could get rid of the toolbar, too!

I'm trying to share good info with my following (and I will share the best tools, if it's Hootsuite) but the toolbar across the top is just too invasive. Most of the people I work with won't know they can turn it off with the drop down. I should be able to decide whether my links go out with the toolbar.

If you need that to be a premium/paid feature, I would pay $29/year to control it.