Ow.ly removes social bar, doesn't break Instapaper any more @hootsuite

I've been critical of the ow.ly link shortening service in the past, and of HootSuite, which pretty much forces you to use ow.ly.

However it seems that ow.ly have changed two things, and that means their service is now acceptable.

First of all, ow.ly has removed it's horrible social bar from the top of pages you visit after following a link shortened witih ow.ly. This bar was bad for two reasons. First of all, putting any sort of bar around someone else's site is a bad idea. Secondly it meant if you used a service like Instapaper to save your links to read on a mobile phone, the links just wouldn't work. You got a blank screen or an error message when you tried to click on the links from your Instapaper page.

This means that I can now follow ow.ly links on my mobile phone, and it means I'm willing to retweet them, unless someone can point out a flaw I've spotted. Previously I have refused point blank to retweet ow.ly links, and I don't think I'm the only one.

Here's an ow.ly link for you to test: http://ow.ly/1DuF8

I've tested this using Gravity on my Nokia 6120c to send the link to Instapaper, then I used Opera Mini v4 to get into my Instapaper account and follow the link to the page. I've also had confirmation from one Twitter user, Joshua Withers, who used Tweetie on an iPhone, and opened the ow.ly link inside Tweetie's built-in browser based on Safari.

If you have any test results please leave a comment below.

If it turns out that ow.ly has abandoned the idea of a social bar for good, that means HootSuite is now a viable option for people who want to let many people tweet from the one Twitter account without giving them all the account password. Ow.ly is the only built-in link-shortening service in HootSuite.

Thanks very much to Heath at @ColesOnline's Twitter account who pointed this change out to me.

Posted via email from @djackmanson