4 ms·

Of URL shorteners and the neutrality thereof

37 points by olefoo 16y ago

swombat 16y ago
This post explores the phenomenon of URL shorteners, discusses the potential impact of the recent announcement by Twitter (a favorite site of mine) to rewrite all links shared through the service, and makes a few specific recommendations on how to improve on these implementations. What a god-awful way to start a post. Nothing of interest to hook the mind. What is a URL shortener? You've all seen short URLs before — the links to tinyurl.com, bit.ly, wp.me, etc., recently popularized as a workaround to fit more content into smaller spaces, most notably within Twitter's 140 character limits. URL shorteners work by taking any arbitrary URL (which can contain hundreds of characters or more) and creating a new URL, typically only a handful of characters plus the short domain name, and returning a 301 or a 302 HTTP response code that redirects the browser from the short URL to the original. More factual pointlessness. There is nothing whatsoever that is interesting in that second paragraph. scrolls down 3.5 thousand words written in that style? No thanks. Writing is designed to be read by people. If you have a point, present it digestibly or keep it to yourself.
- tkahn6 16y ago
  I actually enjoyed this writing style and I'm glad he shared his thoughts - I found what he had to say interesting. I think I enjoyed it for the very reason you didn't.
- olefoo 16y ago
  I guess I'm too used to the more bureaucratic forms of literature, I barely noticed his literary style. But the substance of his post, beneath the tedium, is worth paying attention to. If twitter follows through with their plan to require client applications to report back whenever someone clicks on a link passed through twitter; I would find it to be a less compelling platform.
- ComputerGuru 16y ago
  I think you've been spoiled by twitter-stlye "articles." 140 characters, bluntly to the point, with no appreciation for the arts.
  - swombat 16y ago
    No. I've been spoiled by articles that justify their existence in the first few lines, instead of requiring the reader to make a leap of faith and trust the author with half an hour of their precious time. Actually, I haven't been spoiled, they're still fairly rare.
pierrefar 16y ago
All very excellent points, and I'd like to add one more: URL shorteners came into existence because of a need in the market. Removing this need will pretty much kill all shorteners. All articles on this topic I've seen miss this point entirely. They dive into why URL shorteners are bad but ignore why they're here, i.e. how they provide real benefits to their users. Some history: 1. TinyURL was started because emails had a character limit per line (Campaign Monitor suggests 65 characters, but it's more than that: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2075/update-recommended-width-for-t/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2075/update-recomme...). 2. When Twitter came along, there was a massive need to squeeze in a URL in a small space, and tinyurl.com is just too long. At the same time, 2-letter ccTLDs became very easily accessible to the average hacker, and the market exploded. IMHO, this is all Twitter's fault. They should have seen the massive usage of URL shorteners early on and created their own or changed the way the 140-char limit is calculated. t.co is coming late, but better late than never. The final need in the market is analytics. Social media link sharing is mostly about creating a link on a website you don't own (like Twitter) that points to another website you don't own (like google.com or nytimes.com or the BBC). How do you know if anyone cared? My hope for t.co is that it will have real-time good analytics built in to help marketers. Otherwise, they'll all keep using bit.ly or Cligs or home-grown shorteners. This is a genuine need that won't go away for now. My point is simple: if you don't like URL shorteners, don't just bash them but fix the underlying cause instead. Disclosure: I built Cligs and sold it late last year.
- ThomPete 16y ago
  Excellent points. With regards to this being twitters fault. Twitter was originally thought of as a SMS broadcast service where friends and families update each other on where they where. It wasn't until much later that it became a link recommendation powerhouse. This happened when twitter became more of a professional tool, unlike Facebook. So it's perhaps a little harsh to claim it's their fault. But otherwise I agree with our points completely.
  - pierrefar 16y ago
    Yeah you're right, probably a touch too harsh. A better phrasing would be they should have reacted faster when they saw just how important URL shorteners were becoming. Mind you, they were focused on eradicating the fail whale so even then the fault is due to other things being more important.
daakus 16y ago
I understand the need for analytics, but I _think_ most twitter users don't care about that. Couldn't twitter just not count the URL towards the 140 characters? (Yes, more complicated than that in order to prevent spam or whatever, and yes backward compatibility sucks. But basic auth is being killed too.)
- ElbertF 16y ago
  That would break the SMS functionality, which is why they limited posts to 140 chars in the first place.
secos 16y ago
check out http://mug.gd http://mug.gd the eevil URL shortener

37 points by olefoo 16y ago

This post explores the phenomenon of URL shorteners, discusses the potential impact of the recent announcement by Twitter (a favorite site of mine) to rewrite all links shared through the service, and makes a few specific recommendations on how to improve on these implementations. What a god-awful way to start a post. Nothing of interest to hook the mind. What is a URL shortener? You've all seen short URLs before — the links to tinyurl.com, bit.ly, wp.me, etc., recently popularized as a workaround to fit more content into smaller spaces, most notably within Twitter's 140 character limits. URL shorteners work by taking any arbitrary URL (which can contain hundreds of characters or more) and creating a new URL, typically only a handful of characters plus the short domain name, and returning a 301 or a 302 HTTP response code that redirects the browser from the short URL to the original. More factual pointlessness. There is nothing whatsoever that is interesting in that second paragraph. scrolls down 3.5 thousand words written in that style? No thanks. Writing is designed to be read by people. If you have a point, present it digestibly or keep it to yourself.

tkahn6 16y ago
I actually enjoyed this writing style and I'm glad he shared his thoughts - I found what he had to say interesting. I think I enjoyed it for the very reason you didn't.
olefoo 16y ago
I guess I'm too used to the more bureaucratic forms of literature, I barely noticed his literary style. But the substance of his post, beneath the tedium, is worth paying attention to. If twitter follows through with their plan to require client applications to report back whenever someone clicks on a link passed through twitter; I would find it to be a less compelling platform.
ComputerGuru 16y ago
I think you've been spoiled by twitter-stlye "articles." 140 characters, bluntly to the point, with no appreciation for the arts.
- swombat 16y ago
  No. I've been spoiled by articles that justify their existence in the first few lines, instead of requiring the reader to make a leap of faith and trust the author with half an hour of their precious time. Actually, I haven't been spoiled, they're still fairly rare.

pierrefar 16y ago

All very excellent points, and I'd like to add one more: URL shorteners came into existence because of a need in the market. Removing this need will pretty much kill all shorteners. All articles on this topic I've seen miss this point entirely. They dive into why URL shorteners are bad but ignore why they're here, i.e. how they provide real benefits to their users. Some history: 1. TinyURL was started because emails had a character limit per line (Campaign Monitor suggests 65 characters, but it's more than that: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2075/update-recommended-width-for-t/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2075/update-recomme...). 2. When Twitter came along, there was a massive need to squeeze in a URL in a small space, and tinyurl.com is just too long. At the same time, 2-letter ccTLDs became very easily accessible to the average hacker, and the market exploded. IMHO, this is all Twitter's fault. They should have seen the massive usage of URL shorteners early on and created their own or changed the way the 140-char limit is calculated. t.co is coming late, but better late than never. The final need in the market is analytics. Social media link sharing is mostly about creating a link on a website you don't own (like Twitter) that points to another website you don't own (like google.com or nytimes.com or the BBC). How do you know if anyone cared? My hope for t.co is that it will have real-time good analytics built in to help marketers. Otherwise, they'll all keep using bit.ly or Cligs or home-grown shorteners. This is a genuine need that won't go away for now. My point is simple: if you don't like URL shorteners, don't just bash them but fix the underlying cause instead. Disclosure: I built Cligs and sold it late last year.

ThomPete 16y ago
Excellent points. With regards to this being twitters fault. Twitter was originally thought of as a SMS broadcast service where friends and families update each other on where they where. It wasn't until much later that it became a link recommendation powerhouse. This happened when twitter became more of a professional tool, unlike Facebook. So it's perhaps a little harsh to claim it's their fault. But otherwise I agree with our points completely.
- pierrefar 16y ago
  Yeah you're right, probably a touch too harsh. A better phrasing would be they should have reacted faster when they saw just how important URL shorteners were becoming. Mind you, they were focused on eradicating the fail whale so even then the fault is due to other things being more important.

daakus 16y ago

I understand the need for analytics, but I _think_ most twitter users don't care about that. Couldn't twitter just not count the URL towards the 140 characters? (Yes, more complicated than that in order to prevent spam or whatever, and yes backward compatibility sucks. But basic auth is being killed too.)

ElbertF 16y ago
That would break the SMS functionality, which is why they limited posts to 140 chars in the first place.

secos 16y ago

check out http://mug.gd http://mug.gd the eevil URL shortener