4 ms·

URL shorteners are evil. It's the digital equivalent of stepping into a car driven by a stranger, blindfolded. You don't know where you're going before you're t

URL shorteners are evil. It's the digital equivalent of stepping into a car driven by a stranger, blindfolded. You don't know where you're going before you're there. It might not necessarily be a pleasant place.

gaius 16y ago
Plus, they are stupid. What, are we short of space for email? Are links people send each other consuming too much disk? I've barely touched my howevermany squigabytes GMail is giving away these days. I can guarantee that there is no "URL shortening service" that has the longevity of DNS either. If you want any more proof of a bubble, it's that it's possible to operate a business doing this.
- adam-_- 16y ago
  We're short of space for twitter messages. And maybe IRC topics.
  - gaius 16y ago
    That's not true either, there aren't many 140-char URLs anyway.
    - St-Clock 16y ago
      Sure, but the relatively short link to your reply, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492783 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492783, is already 44 characters, so I'm only left with 96 characters on a twitter message. With bit.ly, the link is much shorter with 21 characters, http://bit.ly/j8IpC8 http://bit.ly/j8IpC8, and I'm left with 119 characters to describe the link in a twitter message. Oh, and I'll know how many people clicked on my bit.ly link. I've become addicted to that feature.
      - gaius 16y ago
        But that's a circular argument. If there's no enough room to say what you want to say in a Twitter post then write a blog entry or send an email.
        StavrosK 16y ago
        The problem is "I need 20 more characters for my Tweet". This is only solved by URL shorterners, at the moment.
        nickolai 16y ago
        Maybe we should try 'tweet compression'? Im sure you could pack a lot more text into 144 characters using the right compression algorithm. Dammit i missed april fools day to announce my 'tweet compression' service :(
        wladimir 16y ago
        Yes it is pretty much an artificial problem created by an arbitrary limit. It would be better if Twitter offered their own way to shorten URLs (or have a separate limit for URL length), so that you could still see where the link pointed before clicking on it.
        elehack 16y ago
        If you use the Tweet button, either embedded in a page or installed as a bookmarklet, it will run through Twitter's own shortener. A long version of the URL will then be displayed in the Twitter UI.

gaius 16y ago

Plus, they are stupid. What, are we short of space for email? Are links people send each other consuming too much disk? I've barely touched my howevermany squigabytes GMail is giving away these days. I can guarantee that there is no "URL shortening service" that has the longevity of DNS either. If you want any more proof of a bubble, it's that it's possible to operate a business doing this.

adam-_- 16y ago
We're short of space for twitter messages. And maybe IRC topics.
- gaius 16y ago
  That's not true either, there aren't many 140-char URLs anyway.
  - St-Clock 16y ago
    Sure, but the relatively short link to your reply, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492783 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492783, is already 44 characters, so I'm only left with 96 characters on a twitter message. With bit.ly, the link is much shorter with 21 characters, http://bit.ly/j8IpC8 http://bit.ly/j8IpC8, and I'm left with 119 characters to describe the link in a twitter message. Oh, and I'll know how many people clicked on my bit.ly link. I've become addicted to that feature.
    - gaius 16y ago
      But that's a circular argument. If there's no enough room to say what you want to say in a Twitter post then write a blog entry or send an email.
      - StavrosK 16y ago
        The problem is "I need 20 more characters for my Tweet". This is only solved by URL shorterners, at the moment.
        nickolai 16y ago
        Maybe we should try 'tweet compression'? Im sure you could pack a lot more text into 144 characters using the right compression algorithm. Dammit i missed april fools day to announce my 'tweet compression' service :(
      - wladimir 16y ago
        Yes it is pretty much an artificial problem created by an arbitrary limit. It would be better if Twitter offered their own way to shorten URLs (or have a separate limit for URL length), so that you could still see where the link pointed before clicking on it.
        elehack 16y ago
        If you use the Tweet button, either embedded in a page or installed as a bookmarklet, it will run through Twitter's own shortener. A long version of the URL will then be displayed in the Twitter UI.