Comments on: Please Don’t Use HootSuite; Ow.ly is Dangerous

By: Fabio Luiz Esperati Pagoti

Fabio Luiz Esperati Pagoti — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:40:00 +0000

I don’t think this is true anymore.
It works as bit.ly without any bar.
What annoys me is the need to use hootsuite to manage and view short links stats.

By: Antoine Sabot-Durand

Antoine Sabot-Durand — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:37:00 +0000

I think you should correct this post which content is no more accurate. owl.ly does a 301 redirect like other shortener. ht.ly is the one with social bar which I don’t use.
One the nice things in Hootsuite is the statistics included in the product, but you have to use their shortener to use them.

By: Darcy Kieran

Darcy Kieran — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 04:49:00 +0000

100% right! For as far as I can remember, I never clicked an ow.ly links, from anybody - and I've always stayed away from HootSuite - for that reason. But... Apparently "Non-techie Talk" (below) is right: HootSuite finally understood what you explained above and it's "gone" on the ow.ly service from HootSuite. About time!I wonder how many people out there are still not clicking a ow.ly link because of the way it was working in the past!It most certainly was not safe - and very annoying!

By: Non-techie Talk

Non-techie Talk — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:02:00 +0000

Hootsuite has fixed the “problem.” It now bundles a choice – ow.ly is a straight-up, no frills shortener, and their new ht.ly uses the frame which, had it not been for the masked url, would have been a great idea.

I agree, the URL is a bad idea ripe for phishing. Hopefully, HootSuite will take one more step and merge somehow merge the two ideas – retaining the site’s true URL along with their tool frame.

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 04:57:49 +0000

Great post. I hate framejacked links — ow.ly and su.pr are becoming the most common ones on Twitter.

By: loususi

loususi — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:55:22 +0000

I see no problem with the Ow.ly URL shortening within HootSuite. I've used a few other tweeting alternatives that allow tweeting from multiple accounts and I don't like the desktop app solutions at all. I even tried Brizzly and wanted to like it because of that damned cute little bear guy, but I don't know ... HootSuite is the app for me I guess.

As for Ow.ly ... I don't use any of these URL shortening tools anymore since implemnting YoURLs on one of my websites. As much as I should really get into tracking these shortened URLs, I'm a bit unusual in that I am not typically tweeting and promoting links for the typical social marketing aspects that exploit the open + free communication that the social web allows for ... sure, I am 'marketing' events, ideas, myself + other sundry items by tweeting + such, but these are more personal in nature ... and if they're not personal, I make them my personal passion in some way. If I were ever to tweet and need the stats documented I would research another method, but for right now I post all my shortened links through my YoURLs account posting via hotsects.com ... just for fun ...

By: ahockley

ahockley — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:36:16 +0000

Yes, the StumbleUpon bar has the same issues.

By: Scott Webb

Scott Webb — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:14:48 +0000

is this the same kind of thing as stumbleupon then? the stumble bar goes along the top of the page too?

By: ahockley

ahockley — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:54:52 +0000

Thanks for the link to the script… it's a nice workaround for the savvy, but it sure would be neat if HootSuite made it easier for folks. The reality is that most users don't have a clue about Greasemonkey. That said, I'll point folks to it if they really want to use HootSuite.

By: Joe Perrin

Joe Perrin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:11:32 +0000

I use HootSuite but I didn't want to use the Ow.ly shortening service. So I did a quick google search an came across a greasemonkey script which automatically creates a Bit.ly link when it detects a URL in your HootSuite tweet (the same way that tweetdeck does it) --- the script works on Twitter.com too. The script supports your bit.ly API key or uses the general one if you leave it blank.

Problem solved.

Here is a link to the greasemonkey script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/69295