The most powerful thing on the internet is the link, that powerful (and yet, so simple) concept that clicking on something (text, image, etc…) will take you to another document. It has powered the Web for so long without any problems until now.
In the age of social media, I find something interesting in twitter, I follow the link to find myself in a friendfeed page with nothing but another link that I follow to a reddit page (with a few comments allright) only then to find the last link that would take me to the real content. This is really annoying, believe me! And I find myself going for this long chains more and more.
You’re replying to a twit of a friendfeed page that comments a redditpage that comments the final link, that is a blog entry and allows comments! So why people don’t comment on the original post? Makes more sense.
What we need is a comment API like disqus or coComment that will store comments for that webpage (even if the page itself doesn’t support comments) and allow access for friendfeed/reddit/hackernews/wtv… Is this full-proof? Not really, but is some way to explore.
There is yet another thing about the “new way of linking” that is really annoying:
It’s not just one topbar, but two! Just like Diggbar, that received the most negative reaction for the webdesign community. And notice how the two bars fuck the design of the page, and move content downwards so it’s out of sight!
I believe the problem is that url shortener services can’t really make money out of it, so they want to use their brand, so they can be later bought by a big company. That topbar is the way they have of showing their logo to the user.
I don’t know about you, but I am not really into accepting such an awful bar when what their provide is a simple script that works as an online hashmap. The best url shortener is invisible.