As you may noticed, Facebook Timeline now follow shorts URL (e.g. bit.ly, goo. gl) on your timeline.
Indeed, in the previous version, when you shortened and posted an URL (for example a post or a video), Facebook let the short link intact, and even if a small illustration of your final content appeared just below, a click on the picture OR the link quite simply follow your shot URL.
But now, when you post a short URL, even if your link is preserved, the link on the small illustration is the original non-shortened link! So Facebook seems to follow short URLs.
Can this be avoided? (keeping the small illustration is useful to arouse people curiosity)
In some cases (in particular to audit links), it can be very interesting to keep a link shortened. And I'm pretty sure that people click on the picture rather than the link you post. (>90%)
One solution would be to come up with your own URL shortener. Imagine you want the URL:
http://the-url-you-want-to-hide.com
to be shortened to
You have to make http://ash-short-url.com/xxxx load up a page with the following content:
<script>window.location="http://the-url-you-want-to-hide.com"</script>
The Facebook crawler will not execute scripts, so it will not follow that.