I was just viewing a users profile on dribbble.com, they had linked their profile with twitter, when hovering over the link to go to their twitter page, it shows a url like this:
I’m wondering what the website/coding reason/advantage for doing this would be? why not just put a normal link to their twitter profile? does this protect the website from phishing attempts or something?
dribbble could be tracking/counting the links?
eg, “click” could be a page which counts the click, then it sends them on their way to the page.
EDIT:
For example, search Google for “Stack Overflow” and hover over one of the sponsored links on the right. in the status bar, you will see the link goes to a page hosted by Google rather than to the actual link. This page will be keeping a record of all the clicks on that link, then redirecting the link as expected.