Published 14 years 7 months ago • Last updated March 22, 2025 • ⏱️ < 1 min read
Just thought I'd post the obvious and state we need @ urls. At the moment when using @ the browser assumes you want to use ftp on the site in question but I propose when using a url that begins with @ it should default to your chosen social network. @uid would resolve to twitter.com/uid or facebook.com/uid. Doesn't that make sense? Look at the adverts on TV when they say follow us on twitter for example @ourid doesn't really make sense to the average user does it? But if you could type that in directly in the browser and it could prompt you to follow the user then suddenly it's much more friendly and usable.
The @ url would default to your chosen social network but display icons next to the typed in uid which would allow you to choose facebook, twitter or a different social network. If you hit return it would use your default.
<img src="http://www.businessinfo.co.uk/labs/test_files/at-urls.jpg" />The social network could configure the appearance of the icon as well as the user id url to be sent to. Something like:
<meta name="social network" content="text='Add twitter to your social networks?',icon='https://twitter.com/images/someicon.png',url='https://twitter.com/%s'" />