I hate url shorteners too, for all the reasons the author lists and more. But the article is wrong in stating "They serve no purpose other than to create a shor

I hate url shorteners too, for all the reasons the author lists and more. But the article is wrong in stating "They serve no purpose other than to create a short link..." Actually, while that is their primary purpose, they are very attractive to the people who use them because they give you a click tracking on your instance of the URL post, regardless of who owns the target website. For me, this is actually another negative of the whole concept of URL shorteners. But it's a huge draw for the people using them.