Of course, URLs provide not just an (easier) mode of input, but an identifier of the source of the content. An article cite that shows as being at foxnews.com will be considered differently from one at reuters.com or worldnetdaily.com. An invitation to take a survey that's at surveymonkey.com will probably garner a different reaction from me than an invitation pointing at getrichrealquick.com. I will be more likely to check out a video at work that's at youtube.com, or executiveconferenceboard.com than one at hotbazongas.com. (Yes, these things can be spoofed, or masked, but in many case, perhaps less extreme, they remain useful data.)
But as far as input tools, URLs are inconvenient to use beyond just the main domain, at most. Though maybe I'm weird — I'll still type "facebook.com" on the address line of the browser rather than search for "facebook login" (on those rare occasions I visit Facebook). On the other hand, I keep a lot of tabs open, and have a lot of things bookmarked, as another way to approach this issue.
I suspect the eventual answer is improvements in voice commands (a la Siri) for computers (which will need some tech improvements to use in an office setting), as well as smart contexts (every morning I go to xyz.com, so the browser shows that as a tab to go to around that time of day) will reduce the need for users to even go to Google to search for the place they want to go.
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Will the URL Go the Way of the AOL Keyword?
This post originally appeared on the Text Patterns blog on the New Atlantis. Interesting little comment by Nicholson Baker about something he does in his new novel: The odd thing about the reaction to this book is that almost everybody is most interested in the fact that I included a…
Do you say "you are ell" or "earl"?
Every time I see "AOL", I first read it as "AWOL"….
The advantage of typing in one of those earl things is that you're assured that you'll get to the place where you want to go, even if it is a pain to type it in. You probably remember the "facebook login" incident from a few years back; here's what +Jake Kuramoto said about it at the time. http://theappslab.com/2010/02/11/these-are-our-users/
Of course, I'm old enough to remember when comedians in the mid-1990s would suddenly start saying "H T T P colon slash slash W W W…" and by this point the comedians' audiences would be rolling in the aisles with laughter at the absurdity of it all.
Thankfully, the comedians didn't know about telnet or ftp.
+Scott Randel I tend to say "earl" casually, but around non-techie folks "you-are-ell".
+John E. Bredehoft Or Gopher or Archie.