It’s Gawky
Awkward; ungainly – tweet sense deficient. Twitter is not Facebook and sharing content from Facebook to Twitter or sprinkling Twitter timelines with Facebook seasoning just doesn’t quite send a positive message about your social media prowess.
I’ve asked this question in the past, “Is It Time To Ditch Link Shorteners?”
Within my blog post above is another link discussing why link shorteners hurt the user experience and destroy the web.
Also, shorteners don’t matter as much for space as they did in the past with Twitter. See: Twitter Support
Free Tip (worth 2 cents)
When I see a fb.me link in my Twitter timeline, it tells me that the linked content is shared somewhere from within Facebook or one of it’s interfaces. I, like a few others, come to Twitter to escape Facebook though.
So, when I see a tweet with fb.me within it, I refrain from clicking on it.
If your tweets contain lots of those fb.me links, you may want to be aware that there are many like me who won’t click on that link.
So, why share content with a Facebook flavor when it’s unnecessary, harms the user experience, and keeps part of your audience from seeing the content that you want to share?
It’s just so much more refreshing when I see tweets that contain the original URL (although Twitter does some interesting unseen backend stuff with those URLs). I, like some other Twitterers, will be more apt to click on a URL that displays at least part of the original URL before it’s automatically truncated, over a shortened URL that tells me nothing about where the link is being redirected to.
I’ve seen the engagement differences and my metrics show a clear difference when using non-shortened URLs.
When a tweet contains a fb.me shortened link, it’s another slap in the face.
Again, this is Twitter. Respecting the audience by taking time to treat it differently than Facebook, will yield quality results.
If your Twitter homepage is filled with tweets containing fb.me links, you might want to reconsider what your goal really is. No one wants to send the wrong message, but with Twitter, you certainly don’t want to scare away potential views or follows. In many ways, Twitter excels over Facebook and it pays to take the time to understand the audience.
Tweet away … just please get rid of those fb.me links from the tweets.
