Social Media Marketing for Photographers // Photography + Community

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Episode 16 of the Social Photo Podcast is ready. Hosts Aaron Hockley and Lyza Danger Gardner talk about the iPad pre-sales polls, URL shorteners, a feature interview with Andy Adams from Flak Photo, and more. This episode is about thirty minutes long.

Links to Things We Mention

• The Social Photo Talk pre-sale iPad poll
• Jim Goldstein’s call for a reality check on iPad hype
• The problems with HootSuite/Ow.ly
• ShadyURL – Don’t just shorten your URL, make it suspicious and frightening.
• Flak Photo
• We’re doing a Q&A episode soon – send your questions about photography and social media to [email protected]

Distribution and Feed

We’re now on iTunes – if you use iTunes, you can subscribe using this link: Subscribe on iTunes

You can also find the podcast as an attachment to the main Social Photo Talk RSS Feed. You should see a player at the bottom of this post if you want to listen directly, or you can grab the Episode 16 mp3 file directly.

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We’d love to have your feedback – technical, content, or otherwise. Leave a comment here or send mail to [email protected] – thanks!

Photo by powerbooktrance, used under Creative Commons licensing

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These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. Social Photo Podcast #19: iPad, iPad, iPad, and Adobe
2. Social Photo Podcast #14: More iPad talk, eBooks, HDR
3. Social Photo Podcast #15: Flickr Contacts, Shane Rich Interview

Tagged as:
andy adams,
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flak photo,
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interviews,
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social photo podcast

Today’s article is a warning for anyone using Twitter (including photographers). There are a variety of third-party Twitter clients (I generally recommend TweetDeck or Brizzly), but I’m concerned by one of the players that seems to be gaining some traction. HootSuite offers a range of Twitter tools (including some really nice ones) but one of their “features” is the Ow.ly URL cloaking service… and it has a big problem. Using HootSuite, when one shrinks a URL it uses Ow.ly, and in doing so you’re contributing to confusion and security problems on the web.

Bad Behavior

Most URL shortening services such as Bit.ly and Tinyurl route users through a shortened URL and onto the destination webpage, with some services offering valuable metrics along the way. Ow.ly behaves a bit differently. Instead of simply redirecting users to the destination page, Ow.ly displays the destination’s page content, but framed with an Ow.ly bar across the top of the page, and the Ow.ly shortened link showing in the browser’s location bar instead of the page’s true address.

Ow.ly: A Perfect Setup for Phishing

You’ve probably noticed an increase in the number of phishing attacks on Twitter, and it’s not just the newbies that are getting duped. How do we train folks to avoid phishing? Generally it involves a couple things: don’t click on links when you can’t verify where they’re heading, and before typing in your password, look at the browser’s address bar to be absolutely sure you’re on the right website.

See the problem?

It’s not just annoying to have the Ow.ly bar on the page, it’s dangerous, since it means extra work to escape from Ow.ly to know whether you’re on a legitimate site or one that could be malicious.

Do you want to be the one handing out confusing, phishy-looking URLs to your readers? Ow.ly defenders will argue that end users can opt-out of the service, but don’t blame the victim… your readers shouldn’t have to jump through extra hoops because you’re using a poor set of tools.

The Solution

Don’t use Ow.ly (which really means don’t use HootSuite).

Use Bit.ly or one of the other, more transparent services. Bit.ly can integrate directly with clients such as TweetDeck and one can use their Bit.ly API key to get a full range of metrics on the shortened URLs.

For another look at this issue, including some direct (and very telling) quotes from folks at HootSuite, head over and read No More Owls: An Open Letter to HootSuite.

Photo by hans s, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tagged as:
hootsuite,
ow.ly,
phishing,
Twitter,
url shorteners