The return of the external link

Here's a recent social media trend: Adding the ability to externally link to your own website.

It all started with Clubhouse

On October 25th, Clubhouse announced its "Pinned Links" feature, allowing you to add an external link at the top of a room:

Instagram followed suit

Instagram announced on October 27th that all users can now add external links to their stories using "Link Stickers":

People started using these features faster than you could say "links!"

Let's do an experiment.

Visit 5 random active Instagram business pages. Click on their Stories. You'll almost certainly see one Story that uses the "link sticker" feature.

Clubhouse reported on November 23 that there's been 5.5 million clicks to Pinned links from rooms in less than a month. This makes it one of the platform's fastest-growing features.

Will other platforms follow suit?

Historically, social networking platforms have been very stingy when it comes to allowing you to link to external websites.

Not only that, but social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been known to limit the reach of your posts if they contain links.

The rise of the creator's economy has pushed these social networks to include more options for external linking. Let's hope that old-fashioned links finally make a comeback.