Url Shorteners: Destroying the Web Since 2002

Good point in this article. It also made me realize how grateful I am that MOST users on Twitter don't stoop so low as to use text messaging shorthand. I guess it is probably a matter of time until that becomes acceptable, but I am very happy we aren't there yet.

I prefer these instead: <a href="http://freakinghugeurl.com/" rel="nofollow">http://freakinghugeurl.com/</a>

<i>As a software developer, you'll be fortunate to build one project that achieves critical mass in your entire life. And even then, only if you are a very, very lucky programmer: in the right place, at the right time, with the right idea, working with the right people. Most of us never get there. I don't think I will.</i><p>...which is overmodest: StackOverflow already has critical mass.

<i>&#62; Still, I'm a little perplexed as to the media's near-obsession with the service</i><p>News is all about status updates. They've discovered that polling really sucks.

I don't get why there isn't a twitter feature that allows you to use something like bbcode tags to insert a url and only leave the link name in the message.

"I can't quite fit everything in there without sounding like an SMS-addled teenage girl."<p>What's wrong with that?<p>Reminds me of the story of the college green where they didn't put in any sidewalks. In order to make sure they put them where people actually needed them, they waited 6 months and them put them where the grass was worn.<p>These SMS-addled teenage girls have already done that for you. Don't disparage them. Take advantage of what they have taught us.

I had to stop at "The internet is the house that PageRank built"... gah! Talk about cart-before-horse.

<a href="http://tr.im/" rel="nofollow">http://tr.im/</a> has become my favorite. It's the shortest one I've seen and actually has a name that makes sense.

there are other good features to some url shorteners beyond just getting your link to fit inside a tweet.<p>the features like metrics and click tracking behind a lot of these better offerings are quite nice and are useful way beyond status messages.

And now short urls with a twist... ahh, so cute :) - <a href="http://www.socuteurl.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.socuteurl.com/</a>

It's cool what Twitter has done in the search results: allowing any shortened URL to be expanded <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=shortener" rel="nofollow">http://search.twitter.com/search?q=shortener</a>. I await a browser plugin (or site widget) that will implement that same functionality into pages beyond search.twitter.com, maybe placing a dot next to each shortened URL for clicking.

I think about short urls and twitter this way:<p>Twitter is supposed to be real time so in reality the url only needs to last say a few weeks to really be viable even for search so if there is a pollution of some dead links over time, who cares its not like it is anything new and you should be able to google it by then.

&#60;=3 letter domains -&#62; one word domains -&#62; SEO domains -&#62; tiny domains.

Many non-geeks don't understand the whole URL thing in the first place. If you really want to save it, than educate the masses.

What I can't understand is why Twitter itself hasn't implemented this functionality. They could just have an "add link" button which exposed a text field for a URL, which is then added to the message. They could then charge for metrics on the clicks. Why encourage the use of a middleman?<p>They could build it such that they could at least keep the proper href, maybe rely on a script or device API to count clicks. Best of both worlds.

I'm still waiting for the obligatory "Jeff Atwood: Destroying the Web since 2002" comment

1) It's twitters fault<p>2) It's dangerous<p>3) Some irony... <a href="http://bit.ly/13nYfY" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/13nYfY</a>