6 ms·

Url Shorteners: Destroying the Web Since 2002

76 points by zcrar70 17y ago

jcl 17y ago
As a software developer, you'll be fortunate to build one project that achieves critical mass in your entire life. And even then, only if you are a very, very lucky programmer: in the right place, at the right time, with the right idea, working with the right people. Most of us never get there. I don't think I will. ...which is overmodest: StackOverflow already has critical mass.
- maukdaddy 17y ago
  I think his modesty is well placed. SO has critcal mass within the technical community, but not with the average user
  - robryan 17y ago
    I think thats the most it can ever really hope for without alienating it's users.
  - jerf 17y ago
    It can't be too far off. Anecdote: In the last three weeks, I've hit a Stack Overflow site in a normal Google query three times, and an ExpertSexChange query once. Out of curiousity, I clicked the SexChange link for completeness, and the score is, StackOverflow 3, ExpertSexChange 0. (Yes, I know about scrolling to the bottom. No answers, just fumbling around and questions.) Granted, I was searching for Erlang and Perl stuff, but that's still a change vs. two months ago. Average users, which I will define as "Googlers", will probably get there soon. (I'm assuming you're not talking about "my grandmother", who will never know what Stack Overflow is. But that would be a very silly standard to apply, so I'm assuming that's not what you're getting at.)
- dugmartin 17y ago
  No, I think by critical mass he means your Aunt Minnie knows about it and asked if you are using Twitter at the last family gathering. Aunt Minnie will never know about StackOverflow.
TrevorJ 17y ago
Good point in this article. It also made me realize how grateful I am that MOST users on Twitter don't stoop so low as to use text messaging shorthand. I guess it is probably a matter of time until that becomes acceptable, but I am very happy we aren't there yet.
Herring 17y ago
> Still, I'm a little perplexed as to the media's near-obsession with the service News is all about status updates. They've discovered that polling really sucks.
robryan 17y ago
I don't get why there isn't a twitter feature that allows you to use something like bbcode tags to insert a url and only leave the link name in the message.
- msc 17y ago
  I think the reason is SMS compatibility.
  - axod 17y ago
    Restricting most users, because a tiny minority have old crappy phones doesn't seem to make sense to me.
    - vorador 17y ago
      But things have been like this since ages in the software industry : think to the CON device under windows or termios under unix, to use examples that appeared recently on hn.
    - thorax 17y ago
      They really feel at home within this constraint. It's very important to them that it be compatible with the 160-char SMS limit because they feel Twitter is at its heart an SMS publishing system that has grown to have other uses.
      - yosh 17y ago
        They may feel that, but they never really got that right in the first place. Twitter has a 140 character limit. SMS has a 140 byte limit. There's a 7-bit GSM character encoding which gives you the 160 characters, but that only covers basic English, select bits of other Western European langauges, and some currency symbols. So beyond those characters, you have to go down to 140 characters, and if you're in non-Latin land (like Chinese or Arabic), you have to use UCS-2, which only gives you 70 characters. The simple Twitter 140 limit doesn't map to that at all, and coupled with the fact that Twitter SMS is disabled in a good chunk of countries, it seems silly to think of it as an SMS publishing system.
edw519 17y ago
"I can't quite fit everything in there without sounding like an SMS-addled teenage girl." What's wrong with that? Reminds me of the story of the college green where they didn't put in any sidewalks. In order to make sure they put them where people actually needed them, they waited 6 months and them put them where the grass was worn. These SMS-addled teenage girls have already done that for you. Don't disparage them. Take advantage of what they have taught us.
- WilliamLP 17y ago
  i c wht ur syng.
  - Retric 17y ago
    Or "I _E_ W_A_ Y_U _R_ S_Y_N_." But, English is redundant for a reason. Da avantige o usen more lettors es whan you not typen so great. "I c what ur syng" can't be garbled much at all before it's complete gibberish.
- tdavis 17y ago
  What's wrong with it is some of us still think the English language (in this case) exists for a reason and hate attempting to read vowelless nonsense created by lazy teenagers. I've seen some pretty poignant and hilarious stuff fit into 140 characters, and not one of them included "SMS-speak." What, exactly, have they taught us? That you can effectively communicate using a bastardized version of a language? Call me old-fashioned, but I think I'll stick with the old adage and, "use my words."
  - WilliamLP 17y ago
    Has anyone ever tried to lay out a minimal standard for English spelling and communication? That sounds like an interesting idea to me, and it's also kind of funny that almost anyone who has a violent dislike for Java's verbosity would also violently resist the suggestion to make their written communication more efficient.
    - 17y ago
noodle 17y ago
there are other good features to some url shorteners beyond just getting your link to fit inside a tweet. the features like metrics and click tracking behind a lot of these better offerings are quite nice and are useful way beyond status messages.
- teej 17y ago
  Bit.ly alone doesn't compensate for all the other pointless link shorteners out there.
  - noodle 17y ago
    just because there exist bad implementations of an idea doesn't necessarily mean the concept itself is bad.
- pj 17y ago
  This is really very extremely selfish way to look at it. Really, what is the value of knowing that someone went to some page because they clicked on your shortened url to it. How much lazier can a content producer be, they aren't even producing content. It's so short term focused it makes me want to puke my guts out. People with no vision create products for people with no vision and then people with vision get harmed by it. The future of the internet is getting harmed by it. URL Shorteners should be outlawed for the sake of humanity. Short urls = short focus, while the Internet = vision I don't think I'm being overly dramatic here. Shortened urls reduce future generations' ability to find information. Information and access to it will simply Vaporize!
  - noodle 17y ago
    the value is mostly found in marketing activities. to know where traffic is coming from allows you to get a better idea of where to focus and what provides best results. i'm curious to know why you think that shortened urls will reduce future generations' ability to find information. especially since, for the most part, their usage is restricted to the social web.
zargon 17y ago
I prefer these instead: http://freakinghugeurl.com/ http://freakinghugeurl.com/
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
access_denied 17y ago
Many non-geeks don't understand the whole URL thing in the first place. If you really want to save it, than educate the masses.
jmatt 17y ago
1) It's twitters fault 2) It's dangerous 3) Some irony... http://bit.ly/13nYfY http://bit.ly/13nYfY
- jpwagner 17y ago
  thanks for the waste of time...
michaelawill 17y ago
http://tr.im/ http://tr.im/ has become my favorite. It's the shortest one I've seen and actually has a name that makes sense.
- andreyf 17y ago
  This is shorter: www.›.ws/ྒྷ (from http://tinyarro.ws/ http://tinyarro.ws/)
  - dreish 17y ago
    It works without the "www.".
adrianwaj 17y ago
It's cool what Twitter has done in the search results: allowing any shortened URL to be expanded http://search.twitter.com/search?q=shortener http://search.twitter.com/search?q=shortener. I await a browser plugin (or site widget) that will implement that same functionality into pages beyond search.twitter.com, maybe placing a dot next to each shortened URL for clicking.
kylec 17y ago
I'm still waiting for the obligatory "Jeff Atwood: Destroying the Web since 2002" comment
philipolson 17y ago
And now short urls with a twist... ahh, so cute :) - http://www.socuteurl.com/ http://www.socuteurl.com/
mooneater 17y ago
I had to stop at "The internet is the house that PageRank built"... gah! Talk about cart-before-horse.
buugs 17y ago
I think about short urls and twitter this way: Twitter is supposed to be real time so in reality the url only needs to last say a few weeks to really be viable even for search so if there is a pollution of some dead links over time, who cares its not like it is anything new and you should be able to google it by then.
sho 17y ago
What I can't understand is why Twitter itself hasn't implemented this functionality. They could just have an "add link" button which exposed a text field for a URL, which is then added to the message. They could then charge for metrics on the clicks. Why encourage the use of a middleman? They could build it such that they could at least keep the proper href, maybe rely on a script or device API to count clicks. Best of both worlds.
quizbiz 17y ago
<=3 letter domains -> one word domains -> SEO domains -> tiny domains.

76 points by zcrar70 17y ago

jcl 17y ago

As a software developer, you'll be fortunate to build one project that achieves critical mass in your entire life. And even then, only if you are a very, very lucky programmer: in the right place, at the right time, with the right idea, working with the right people. Most of us never get there. I don't think I will. ...which is overmodest: StackOverflow already has critical mass.

maukdaddy 17y ago
I think his modesty is well placed. SO has critcal mass within the technical community, but not with the average user
- robryan 17y ago
  I think thats the most it can ever really hope for without alienating it's users.
- jerf 17y ago
  It can't be too far off. Anecdote: In the last three weeks, I've hit a Stack Overflow site in a normal Google query three times, and an ExpertSexChange query once. Out of curiousity, I clicked the SexChange link for completeness, and the score is, StackOverflow 3, ExpertSexChange 0. (Yes, I know about scrolling to the bottom. No answers, just fumbling around and questions.) Granted, I was searching for Erlang and Perl stuff, but that's still a change vs. two months ago. Average users, which I will define as "Googlers", will probably get there soon. (I'm assuming you're not talking about "my grandmother", who will never know what Stack Overflow is. But that would be a very silly standard to apply, so I'm assuming that's not what you're getting at.)
dugmartin 17y ago
No, I think by critical mass he means your Aunt Minnie knows about it and asked if you are using Twitter at the last family gathering. Aunt Minnie will never know about StackOverflow.

TrevorJ 17y ago

Good point in this article. It also made me realize how grateful I am that MOST users on Twitter don't stoop so low as to use text messaging shorthand. I guess it is probably a matter of time until that becomes acceptable, but I am very happy we aren't there yet.

Herring 17y ago

> Still, I'm a little perplexed as to the media's near-obsession with the service News is all about status updates. They've discovered that polling really sucks.

robryan 17y ago

I don't get why there isn't a twitter feature that allows you to use something like bbcode tags to insert a url and only leave the link name in the message.

msc 17y ago
I think the reason is SMS compatibility.
- axod 17y ago
  Restricting most users, because a tiny minority have old crappy phones doesn't seem to make sense to me.
  - vorador 17y ago
    But things have been like this since ages in the software industry : think to the CON device under windows or termios under unix, to use examples that appeared recently on hn.
  - thorax 17y ago
    They really feel at home within this constraint. It's very important to them that it be compatible with the 160-char SMS limit because they feel Twitter is at its heart an SMS publishing system that has grown to have other uses.
    - yosh 17y ago
      They may feel that, but they never really got that right in the first place. Twitter has a 140 character limit. SMS has a 140 byte limit. There's a 7-bit GSM character encoding which gives you the 160 characters, but that only covers basic English, select bits of other Western European langauges, and some currency symbols. So beyond those characters, you have to go down to 140 characters, and if you're in non-Latin land (like Chinese or Arabic), you have to use UCS-2, which only gives you 70 characters. The simple Twitter 140 limit doesn't map to that at all, and coupled with the fact that Twitter SMS is disabled in a good chunk of countries, it seems silly to think of it as an SMS publishing system.

edw519 17y ago

"I can't quite fit everything in there without sounding like an SMS-addled teenage girl." What's wrong with that? Reminds me of the story of the college green where they didn't put in any sidewalks. In order to make sure they put them where people actually needed them, they waited 6 months and them put them where the grass was worn. These SMS-addled teenage girls have already done that for you. Don't disparage them. Take advantage of what they have taught us.

WilliamLP 17y ago
i c wht ur syng.
- Retric 17y ago
  Or "I _E_ W_A_ Y_U _R_ S_Y_N_." But, English is redundant for a reason. Da avantige o usen more lettors es whan you not typen so great. "I c what ur syng" can't be garbled much at all before it's complete gibberish.
tdavis 17y ago
What's wrong with it is some of us still think the English language (in this case) exists for a reason and hate attempting to read vowelless nonsense created by lazy teenagers. I've seen some pretty poignant and hilarious stuff fit into 140 characters, and not one of them included "SMS-speak." What, exactly, have they taught us? That you can effectively communicate using a bastardized version of a language? Call me old-fashioned, but I think I'll stick with the old adage and, "use my words."
- WilliamLP 17y ago
  Has anyone ever tried to lay out a minimal standard for English spelling and communication? That sounds like an interesting idea to me, and it's also kind of funny that almost anyone who has a violent dislike for Java's verbosity would also violently resist the suggestion to make their written communication more efficient.
  - 17y ago

noodle 17y ago

there are other good features to some url shorteners beyond just getting your link to fit inside a tweet. the features like metrics and click tracking behind a lot of these better offerings are quite nice and are useful way beyond status messages.

teej 17y ago
Bit.ly alone doesn't compensate for all the other pointless link shorteners out there.
- noodle 17y ago
  just because there exist bad implementations of an idea doesn't necessarily mean the concept itself is bad.
pj 17y ago
This is really very extremely selfish way to look at it. Really, what is the value of knowing that someone went to some page because they clicked on your shortened url to it. How much lazier can a content producer be, they aren't even producing content. It's so short term focused it makes me want to puke my guts out. People with no vision create products for people with no vision and then people with vision get harmed by it. The future of the internet is getting harmed by it. URL Shorteners should be outlawed for the sake of humanity. Short urls = short focus, while the Internet = vision I don't think I'm being overly dramatic here. Shortened urls reduce future generations' ability to find information. Information and access to it will simply Vaporize!
- noodle 17y ago
  the value is mostly found in marketing activities. to know where traffic is coming from allows you to get a better idea of where to focus and what provides best results. i'm curious to know why you think that shortened urls will reduce future generations' ability to find information. especially since, for the most part, their usage is restricted to the social web.

zargon 17y ago

I prefer these instead: http://freakinghugeurl.com/ http://freakinghugeurl.com/

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

access_denied 17y ago

Many non-geeks don't understand the whole URL thing in the first place. If you really want to save it, than educate the masses.

jmatt 17y ago

1) It's twitters fault 2) It's dangerous 3) Some irony... http://bit.ly/13nYfY http://bit.ly/13nYfY

jpwagner 17y ago
thanks for the waste of time...

michaelawill 17y ago

http://tr.im/ http://tr.im/ has become my favorite. It's the shortest one I've seen and actually has a name that makes sense.

andreyf 17y ago
This is shorter: www.›.ws/ྒྷ (from http://tinyarro.ws/ http://tinyarro.ws/)
- dreish 17y ago
  It works without the "www.".

adrianwaj 17y ago

It's cool what Twitter has done in the search results: allowing any shortened URL to be expanded http://search.twitter.com/search?q=shortener http://search.twitter.com/search?q=shortener. I await a browser plugin (or site widget) that will implement that same functionality into pages beyond search.twitter.com, maybe placing a dot next to each shortened URL for clicking.

kylec 17y ago

I'm still waiting for the obligatory "Jeff Atwood: Destroying the Web since 2002" comment

philipolson 17y ago

And now short urls with a twist... ahh, so cute :) - http://www.socuteurl.com/ http://www.socuteurl.com/

mooneater 17y ago

I had to stop at "The internet is the house that PageRank built"... gah! Talk about cart-before-horse.

buugs 17y ago

I think about short urls and twitter this way: Twitter is supposed to be real time so in reality the url only needs to last say a few weeks to really be viable even for search so if there is a pollution of some dead links over time, who cares its not like it is anything new and you should be able to google it by then.

sho 17y ago

What I can't understand is why Twitter itself hasn't implemented this functionality. They could just have an "add link" button which exposed a text field for a URL, which is then added to the message. They could then charge for metrics on the clicks. Why encourage the use of a middleman? They could build it such that they could at least keep the proper href, maybe rely on a script or device API to count clicks. Best of both worlds.

quizbiz 17y ago

<=3 letter domains -> one word domains -> SEO domains -> tiny domains.