I always copy/paste the URL when I want to share a website. That's what the URL is meant for. Heck, it's easier to copy the URL (using the keyboard) than it is to use the mouse to click on some button.
Sharing buttons are a nuisance more than anything. at best, I'd say they're a tool to enable spying on users and should be categorically blocked (as standard uBlock₀ filter rules let you do with a single click).
> Sharing buttons are a nuisance more than anything.
They're actually most often used as a quick way for people to support a site. I've seen it at every company I've worked for - they're easily the most common way that our site is distributed socially.
It's easier to copy the URL, but it's still faster to share by clicking than it is to do by copying the URL, navigating to the site you want to share to, pasting in the URL, adding some descriptive text, and clicking the share button.
Besides, sharing buttons which are just links (as in this post) don't aren't really that intrusive.
I can't believe Amazon doesn't have a "copy link" button. I guess they don't want too many "amzn.to" links floating around, but I hate to need to use bitly or an extension just to get the compressed link.
Why do you still need shortened links? For text messages, aesthetics, or ease of analog communication? Twitter, previously the main use case, no longer counts link length in tweets.
While I don't think the URL shortening matters too much, there's still another important attribute of using these shortlinks that manifests itself on youtube: They also omit irrelevant metadata like URL parameters that were specific to your session or the way you arrived at the site.
For example, youtube will often include extra garbage parameters for stuff like playlists - which the youtu.be shorturls omit, making them perfect for sharing videos.
These parameters are not apparent to those with whom you share the shortlink, but I'd wager that the site stores a mapping from the shortlink to the session in which it was generated. Which may be OK for you; I don't know.
Is the identifier unique? Does it have to be? Without switching to a different browser on a different IP addr and finding the same video again through a different search, would you even know?
Yes, the format is youtu.be/<video id> where <video id> matches the one in the long URL (youtube.com/watch?v=<video id>&extra patameters...) and is unique to the video.
This feature already exists and you don't need a button for it. It's part of HTML metadata, specifically the <link rel="shortlink"> tag.
You could either provide some sort of button to your browser to place this into the clipboard, or use an extension like pentadactyl to add a keyboard shortcut for it. (It's simply “y” by default - so copying URLs works like yanking in vim)
As mentioned, they do have a shortened link option. Also, where do you need shortened links, now that Twitter has excluded them from character counts (and used their own link shortener before then)? Facebook truncates URLs, etc.
Sharing buttons are a nuisance more than anything. at best, I'd say they're a tool to enable spying on users and should be categorically blocked (as standard uBlock₀ filter rules let you do with a single click).