Reason to Use Link Shorteners
People use link shorteners to shorten their URLs especially when they want to share sites on Twitter thanks to the limitation on the number of characters per tweet.
Reason to Dislike Link Shorteners
What are your thoughts on this? Would you willingly click on a shortened link? Or would you actually be averse to doing so?For me, it’s actually the latter. Shortened URLs look like a mix of letters that don’t make sense at all. That’s precisely what makes me reluctant to click on those links.
It’s because you don’t know where those links will take you. How would you know what website you’ll be brought to based only on the shortened URL?
You can see something like bit.covzxwm (example only), and that doesn’t look appealing or safe especially not when you compare it to something from sites like Daily Two Cents such as dailytwocents.com/article-title-here.
The latter URL tells you which site you’re going to be brought to, so you won’t end up being surprised when you click the link. When you click on the link, you know you’re going to this particular site to read this particular article.
Is It Safe to Click on a Link Shortener?
But with a shortened link, if you’re just looking at the URL, it will tell you nothing, so how will you know it’s safe to click on that link? What if you’re brought to a dangerous site with viruses and malware or something?Or what if you end up getting redirected to some other site? What if you get taken or redirected to an ad?
Of course, that’s not to say that all short URLs would do something like that, but, with the way they look, they just give that sort of impression or vibe, don’t they?
What do you think? So, are you reluctant to click on short URLs that you see on websites like Twitter, or do you not mind them at all?
*Notes:
- This was previously published elsewhere
- The last updated date is listed as Aug 12th, 2015 1:01:25am
- First image is by GraphBerry (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by Cpro (CC:BY-SA) from Wikimedia Commons
- Image is meant to symbolize someone using a link shortener
- YouTube video shows you how to shorten links
