4 ms·

I'm surprised there's still any interest in standalone URL shorteners. Didn't Twitter make them obsolete when it implemented its own?

tropicalmug 10y ago
There are other needs for a shortened URL. Perhaps you have to hardcode a link in code and don't want to be tied to a page whose contents may break. If you control your URL shortener, you can hardcode your shortened one, and update the redirect as needed.
- hk__2 10y ago
  > Perhaps you have to hardcode a link in code and don't want to be tied to a page whose contents may break. If you control your URL shortener, you can hardcode your shortened one, and update the redirect as needed. And when your URL shortener goes down, all links are dead. Shortening URLs is the last thing you want to do when you need to preserve pages that might go down. Caching is a better solution.
  - morninj 10y ago
    http://perma.cc http://perma.cc addresses this problem.
    - colemickens 10y ago
      Why would one use this over archive.is?
rsync 10y ago
We[1] just launched a new shortener and it supports URLs. That's not the primary use-case for it[2][3], but we're happy to support people shortening URLs if they want to. The reason there's room for this is that our URL shortening function has no ads, no third party tracking, no bloat ... no dark patterns. That's worth something to some people. [1] Oh By, Inc. [2] https://0x.co/examples.html https://0x.co/examples.html [3] https://0x.co/hnfaq.html https://0x.co/hnfaq.html
- hk__2 10y ago
  > The reason there's room for this is that our URL shortening function has no ads, no third party tracking, no bloat ... no dark patterns. But it’s still a closed, proprietary database and there’s no way to decode an “Oh By Code” if the service goes down, which is the disadvantage number one you have with URL shorteners. > The real utility are the easily recognizable codes, prefixed with "0x". Why not using a prefix that helps differentiate your codes from hexadecimal numbers? How do you plan to get people to know your service if it’s not recognizable? Let’s say I put one of those codes on my business card, I still have to write somewhere that people should use 0x.co to access the content, which ruins the advantage of having just one code rather than a URL to my website (literally anyone knows how to open a URL in a browser).
  - rsync 10y ago
    "But it’s still a closed, proprietary database and there’s no way to decode an “Oh By Code” if the service goes down, which is the disadvantage number one you have with URL shorteners." Yes, that's correct. In this case, "Oh By" will continue running indefinitely. This is true for two reasons: 1) Building an extremely lightweight, ad free interface has a happy byproduct of ... being extremely lightweight. The infrastructure requirements for even a wildly popular "Oh By" are trivial. 2) Because Oh By is self-funded, there is no pressure from outside parties to break the pattern of an ad free, tracking free service with zero bloat. If you're having trouble swallowing this, remember that rsync.net has been running continuously since 2001[1]. I think that's a credible track record[2]. [1] As a feature of JohnCompanies, the first VPS provider, and then as a standalone corporation in 2006. [2] In fact, the rsync.net warrant canary turns 10 years old this year.
    - paulcole 10y ago
      Past performance is no indicator of future success. There's a 0% chance this will be running "indefinitely." You're just skirting the issue by making a promise you can't keep.
      - 10y ago
jdboyd 10y ago
I like to use single line URLs in a number of circumstances, particularly email and IRC. While some URLs can be trimmed (excessively long Amazon or eBay URLs for instance), others just need a URL shortener, and I'd prefer to use one I control. I used to run a public one but it was getting abused for spam so I stopped.
- jjnoakes 10y ago
  Reason number 37 why URL shortened are bad. They can disappear and all URLs become invalid.
ryan-c 10y ago
I run my own so I can have control and have shorter URLs than available with public shorteners. I generally use it in presentations I do.
greglindahl 10y ago
Because URL shorteners are ticking timebombs, ArchiveTeam has a project to get as many of the links as possible into the Wayback Machine: http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=URLTeam http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=URLTeam (edit: and you can imagine how useful that's going to be once browsers start checking the Wayback whenever they see a 404... we're getting close to starting a trial of that with Firefox, with other browsers to follow.)
pessimizer 10y ago
TinyURL was established in 2002, Twitter in 2006.
vidarh 10y ago
There are many reasons, but the biggest one is simply tracking/analytics for links that don't lead to your own servers.

tropicalmug 10y ago

There are other needs for a shortened URL. Perhaps you have to hardcode a link in code and don't want to be tied to a page whose contents may break. If you control your URL shortener, you can hardcode your shortened one, and update the redirect as needed.

hk__2 10y ago
> Perhaps you have to hardcode a link in code and don't want to be tied to a page whose contents may break. If you control your URL shortener, you can hardcode your shortened one, and update the redirect as needed. And when your URL shortener goes down, all links are dead. Shortening URLs is the last thing you want to do when you need to preserve pages that might go down. Caching is a better solution.
- morninj 10y ago
  http://perma.cc http://perma.cc addresses this problem.
  - colemickens 10y ago
    Why would one use this over archive.is?

rsync 10y ago

We[1] just launched a new shortener and it supports URLs. That's not the primary use-case for it[2][3], but we're happy to support people shortening URLs if they want to. The reason there's room for this is that our URL shortening function has no ads, no third party tracking, no bloat ... no dark patterns. That's worth something to some people. [1] Oh By, Inc. [2] https://0x.co/examples.html https://0x.co/examples.html [3] https://0x.co/hnfaq.html https://0x.co/hnfaq.html

hk__2 10y ago
> The reason there's room for this is that our URL shortening function has no ads, no third party tracking, no bloat ... no dark patterns. But it’s still a closed, proprietary database and there’s no way to decode an “Oh By Code” if the service goes down, which is the disadvantage number one you have with URL shorteners. > The real utility are the easily recognizable codes, prefixed with "0x". Why not using a prefix that helps differentiate your codes from hexadecimal numbers? How do you plan to get people to know your service if it’s not recognizable? Let’s say I put one of those codes on my business card, I still have to write somewhere that people should use 0x.co to access the content, which ruins the advantage of having just one code rather than a URL to my website (literally anyone knows how to open a URL in a browser).
- rsync 10y ago
  "But it’s still a closed, proprietary database and there’s no way to decode an “Oh By Code” if the service goes down, which is the disadvantage number one you have with URL shorteners." Yes, that's correct. In this case, "Oh By" will continue running indefinitely. This is true for two reasons: 1) Building an extremely lightweight, ad free interface has a happy byproduct of ... being extremely lightweight. The infrastructure requirements for even a wildly popular "Oh By" are trivial. 2) Because Oh By is self-funded, there is no pressure from outside parties to break the pattern of an ad free, tracking free service with zero bloat. If you're having trouble swallowing this, remember that rsync.net has been running continuously since 2001[1]. I think that's a credible track record[2]. [1] As a feature of JohnCompanies, the first VPS provider, and then as a standalone corporation in 2006. [2] In fact, the rsync.net warrant canary turns 10 years old this year.
  - paulcole 10y ago
    Past performance is no indicator of future success. There's a 0% chance this will be running "indefinitely." You're just skirting the issue by making a promise you can't keep.
    - 10y ago

jdboyd 10y ago

I like to use single line URLs in a number of circumstances, particularly email and IRC. While some URLs can be trimmed (excessively long Amazon or eBay URLs for instance), others just need a URL shortener, and I'd prefer to use one I control. I used to run a public one but it was getting abused for spam so I stopped.

jjnoakes 10y ago
Reason number 37 why URL shortened are bad. They can disappear and all URLs become invalid.

ryan-c 10y ago

I run my own so I can have control and have shorter URLs than available with public shorteners. I generally use it in presentations I do.

greglindahl 10y ago

Because URL shorteners are ticking timebombs, ArchiveTeam has a project to get as many of the links as possible into the Wayback Machine: http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=URLTeam http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=URLTeam (edit: and you can imagine how useful that's going to be once browsers start checking the Wayback whenever they see a 404... we're getting close to starting a trial of that with Firefox, with other browsers to follow.)

pessimizer 10y ago

TinyURL was established in 2002, Twitter in 2006.

vidarh 10y ago

There are many reasons, but the biggest one is simply tracking/analytics for links that don't lead to your own servers.