4 ms·

>What places are they still widely used outsider of social media? Is that not a good enough reason to begin with? But really, URL shorteners are the direct re

>What places are they still widely used outsider of social media? Is that not a good enough reason to begin with? But really, URL shorteners are the direct result of: 1)Most websites not having human-readable URL's 2)Many places not allowing HTML-style links Both (1) and (2) apply to this forum; e.g.: news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21870064&goto=item%3Fid%3D21867994%2321870064 As a result, we have URL shorteners. They perform the function of <a href="">link text</a>, with the advantage of the users being able to type them by hand, if needs be. They are immensely useful as an internal tool: if you run one locally, URLs of the form http://link/useful-link-description http://link/useful-link-description will quickly become the norm.

atoav 7y ago
And I might add: They are useful for granular tracking (e.g. If you send a link to a resume and you want to make they have read it). if you have a long URL you want to turn into a QR-Code, using a URL shortener will decrease the complexity of the Code (=improve the readabilty), while allowing you to track how many people scanned it and on top of that you can change which site it is pointing to without redirects or reprints.
- pkalinowski 7y ago
  Yep. I think most people don't realise what most end URLs used in shorteners look like. You can share http://example.com/vfdge34 or http://company.com/blog/2000/12/13/top-10-reasons-use-url-shorteners-today-you-wont-believe-number-7?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=another_stupid_recycled_post_campaign_for_social_media&utm_content=look-how-modern-we-are-with-url-shorteners&utm_term=buy_now
vthriller 7y ago
> Most websites not having human-readable URL's What problems human-readable URLs solve in the context of URL shortening and modern websites? Their benefit in the past was that on websites with clear hierarchy you could strip URL path or change a word, thus quickly navigating on a site without resorting to clunky menus or site maps, but modern web doesn't look like that, and "human-readable URLs" slightly changed their appearance over the time too. I find modern auto-generated URLs like, say, news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994-Kutt-a-modern-open-source-URL-shortener to be much inferior: 1. they're longer and much harder to type by hand (and I've seen websites where lowercasing or omission of a single letter past the id results in 404) 2. they don't work well when the author decides to change title (and even HN submission titles change a lot, often multiple times as a result of a long discussion). In fact, (1) is exactly the reason why one would consider using URL shortener today: it's so much easier to dictate and type in by hand!
- smichel17 7y ago
  "Modern" URIs don't have to be unusable. Discourse is a good example of this done right. If HN used discourse style urls, the example you gave above would look like this: news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994/Kutt-a-modern-open-source-URL-shortener/ Further, several redirects are created, so you can access it at any of these uris: news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994 news.ycombinator.com/item/Kutt-a-modern-open-source-URL-shortener/ news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994/arbitrary-text-here The last form means that when the title changes, the canonical uri can be updated without breaking links to the old location. The only unstable form is the second, without the id.
- rsync 7y ago
  "What problems human-readable URLs solve in the context of URL shortening and modern websites?" The problem arises anytime you need to cut and paste, or otherwise transport, a URL between components that aren't directly linked ... If all you're doing is click-click-clicking like a good end-user, it probably doesn't matter - but if you need the URL for some reason, it can be very difficult - especially in a terminal - to properly move around a 500 character URL.
Meph504 7y ago
I have my doubts that you'll find an increase in url shorteners internally, as one this can be handled through Dns if it must. And how often are people reading and typing urls locally? For anything like needing to widely distro a URL it will be posted In a commonly accessible page, a email to those needing it, or distribed slide deck. Or even physically posted QR Codes. As far as putting them in line in a post, i can see the value there but me personally 250 characters isn't going to make or break my ability to read them. To each their own though, ans thanks for the insight.
- romwell 7y ago
  >I have my doubts that you'll find an increase in url shorteners internally ahem go links ahem https://medium.com/@golinks/the-full-history-of-go-links-and-the-golink-system-cbc6d2c8bb3 https://medium.com/@golinks/the-full-history-of-go-links-and...
  - Meph504 7y ago
    I'm not really seeing how this AD by golinks conveys an increasing trend of a 3rd party application to handle internal url shorteners. Just seems to me that any company with a remotely competent IT staff could handle this with a few Dns records and a very simple lookup system. But I've been wrong before admittedly.
    - romwell 7y ago
      >Just seems to me that any company with a remotely competent IT staff could handle this with a few Dns records and a very simple lookup system. Sure, but that's just an in-house URL shortener :) > I'm not really seeing how this AD by golinks conveys It shows that there's enough demand for URL shorteners in the corp world that a company is making a business out of it (even though it's almost trivial to make one yourself).
    - curryst 7y ago
      I've worked at several companies that use some form of go links before. The primary advantage of them is that they are very easily self-serviceable. Anyone can create a new go link, and it's easy enough to do even the HR department managed their own. You are definitely correct that the same thing can be handled using DNS records and something like a reverse proxy configured to route them based on the subdomain. However, that introduces permissions and ease of use issues. You typically don't want HR to have access to edit DNS records. You can relegate it to a subdomain, but at the point you're typing in "mylink.links.company.com" the shortening effect is dubious. Secondly, managing DNS records is typically technical enough that some groups like HR are not going to want to do it. And if I have to go talk to some group every time I want a go link, I'm just not going to do it. It's shockingly useful to think "This is a page other people should know about" and be able to enter "go/page-name/edit", paste the link in the box that comes up, and have "go/page-name" go to that page on everyone's computer in the company. Done and done, you made it accessible in less time than it would take to figure out who you have to talk to get a domain name set up. A secondary benefit is that you can enter a description in your go link. So I can just go to "go/" and get an index of all the golinks we have, with descriptions. It's sometimes useful for when I'm working on a system I haven't used before and want to see what other people have "bookmarked" about it.

atoav 7y ago

And I might add: They are useful for granular tracking (e.g. If you send a link to a resume and you want to make they have read it). if you have a long URL you want to turn into a QR-Code, using a URL shortener will decrease the complexity of the Code (=improve the readabilty), while allowing you to track how many people scanned it and on top of that you can change which site it is pointing to without redirects or reprints.

pkalinowski 7y ago
Yep. I think most people don't realise what most end URLs used in shorteners look like. You can share http://example.com/vfdge34 or http://company.com/blog/2000/12/13/top-10-reasons-use-url-shorteners-today-you-wont-believe-number-7?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=another_stupid_recycled_post_campaign_for_social_media&utm_content=look-how-modern-we-are-with-url-shorteners&utm_term=buy_now

vthriller 7y ago

> Most websites not having human-readable URL's What problems human-readable URLs solve in the context of URL shortening and modern websites? Their benefit in the past was that on websites with clear hierarchy you could strip URL path or change a word, thus quickly navigating on a site without resorting to clunky menus or site maps, but modern web doesn't look like that, and "human-readable URLs" slightly changed their appearance over the time too. I find modern auto-generated URLs like, say, news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994-Kutt-a-modern-open-source-URL-shortener to be much inferior: 1. they're longer and much harder to type by hand (and I've seen websites where lowercasing or omission of a single letter past the id results in 404) 2. they don't work well when the author decides to change title (and even HN submission titles change a lot, often multiple times as a result of a long discussion). In fact, (1) is exactly the reason why one would consider using URL shortener today: it's so much easier to dictate and type in by hand!

smichel17 7y ago
"Modern" URIs don't have to be unusable. Discourse is a good example of this done right. If HN used discourse style urls, the example you gave above would look like this: news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994/Kutt-a-modern-open-source-URL-shortener/ Further, several redirects are created, so you can access it at any of these uris: news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994 news.ycombinator.com/item/Kutt-a-modern-open-source-URL-shortener/ news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994/arbitrary-text-here The last form means that when the title changes, the canonical uri can be updated without breaking links to the old location. The only unstable form is the second, without the id.
rsync 7y ago
"What problems human-readable URLs solve in the context of URL shortening and modern websites?" The problem arises anytime you need to cut and paste, or otherwise transport, a URL between components that aren't directly linked ... If all you're doing is click-click-clicking like a good end-user, it probably doesn't matter - but if you need the URL for some reason, it can be very difficult - especially in a terminal - to properly move around a 500 character URL.

Meph504 7y ago

I have my doubts that you'll find an increase in url shorteners internally, as one this can be handled through Dns if it must. And how often are people reading and typing urls locally? For anything like needing to widely distro a URL it will be posted In a commonly accessible page, a email to those needing it, or distribed slide deck. Or even physically posted QR Codes. As far as putting them in line in a post, i can see the value there but me personally 250 characters isn't going to make or break my ability to read them. To each their own though, ans thanks for the insight.

romwell 7y ago
>I have my doubts that you'll find an increase in url shorteners internally ahem go links ahem https://medium.com/@golinks/the-full-history-of-go-links-and-the-golink-system-cbc6d2c8bb3 https://medium.com/@golinks/the-full-history-of-go-links-and...
- Meph504 7y ago
  I'm not really seeing how this AD by golinks conveys an increasing trend of a 3rd party application to handle internal url shorteners. Just seems to me that any company with a remotely competent IT staff could handle this with a few Dns records and a very simple lookup system. But I've been wrong before admittedly.
  - romwell 7y ago
    >Just seems to me that any company with a remotely competent IT staff could handle this with a few Dns records and a very simple lookup system. Sure, but that's just an in-house URL shortener :) > I'm not really seeing how this AD by golinks conveys It shows that there's enough demand for URL shorteners in the corp world that a company is making a business out of it (even though it's almost trivial to make one yourself).
  - curryst 7y ago
    I've worked at several companies that use some form of go links before. The primary advantage of them is that they are very easily self-serviceable. Anyone can create a new go link, and it's easy enough to do even the HR department managed their own. You are definitely correct that the same thing can be handled using DNS records and something like a reverse proxy configured to route them based on the subdomain. However, that introduces permissions and ease of use issues. You typically don't want HR to have access to edit DNS records. You can relegate it to a subdomain, but at the point you're typing in "mylink.links.company.com" the shortening effect is dubious. Secondly, managing DNS records is typically technical enough that some groups like HR are not going to want to do it. And if I have to go talk to some group every time I want a go link, I'm just not going to do it. It's shockingly useful to think "This is a page other people should know about" and be able to enter "go/page-name/edit", paste the link in the box that comes up, and have "go/page-name" go to that page on everyone's computer in the company. Done and done, you made it accessible in less time than it would take to figure out who you have to talk to get a domain name set up. A secondary benefit is that you can enter a description in your go link. So I can just go to "go/" and get an index of all the golinks we have, with descriptions. It's sometimes useful for when I'm working on a system I haven't used before and want to see what other people have "bookmarked" about it.