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Confirmed: Digg Just Hijacked Your Twitter Links
- jgilliam 17y agoI just started an act.ly twitter petition to put some more pressure on them: http://act.ly/9u http://act.ly/9u Tweet: petition @digg to stop hijacking twitter links. no bait and switch! http://act.ly/9u http://act.ly/9u Retweet to sign #digg
- tortilla 17y agoIncredibly short-sighted decision by Digg. Maybe they should hire a Chief Common Sense Officer.
- pj 17y agoOur company has a CSC: Chief Sanity Checker Sometimes in a startup, people can get crazy. I love having a level head on the team. I mean, it takes passion and exhuberance and a little bit of crazy to make it all work, but you don't want to go over the edge. It's all kind of coming into a fever pitch. It seems like the internet is losing the people who understand what makes sense. I think it's gotten to the point that the ad based models and the social networking and the big investments with no revenue are going to start scrambling to stay alive and we are going to see a lot more decisions that, from the outside, seem ridiculous. From the inside though, there are few options and these companies are going to have to go with something. The eternal september is a constant search for a new january.
- zitterbewegung 17y agoThis is a really bad decision from digg. I suspect that people will start moving away from Digg as a url shortening service now. The diggbar was bad enough encapsulating the content in a frame.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- whughes 17y agoNo, he said people would stop using Digg as a URL shortener. Granted, I don't know anyone who uses Digg to shorten links anyway.
- mikedouglas 17y agoSo the question has to be asked, what does twitter get from a "vibrant" marketplace of url shorteners? Digg is only the first to try and use the links to their advantage. These other services are going to need to pay the bills, and we'll start seeing more and more of these stories. They've got the capital, twitter either needs to buy a url shortener, or at least play kingmaker and push one service.
- mustpax 17y agoThey should just fold the functionality into their API. Add an optional URL field to each tweet, and then within the message the URL can be referenced using Markdown like syntax: [link body][1]. Only the link body text would count against your character count, so you get a free URL. They could even sell the click-through analytics to their large customers. URL shorteners are a hack, there's no reason to encourage them any further.
- potatolicious 17y agoPrecisely. I have no idea why we can't do this - Twitter already supports # and @, there's no reason they can't support URLs in the same manner.
- mcav 17y agoTwitter should just obviate the need for URL shorteners, and make URLs take up only a certain number of characters for the tweet. Then, display them through HTML with ellipsis or something, but keep the HREF pointing to the real thing.
- jonknee 17y agoWhy would they have to buy one? It's an incredibly simple thing to create. It would take more work to buy one and integrate it into their system/API than just create it from scratch.
- DanHulton 17y agoLet me guess... it would only take about a weekend, right? All snark aside, putting together something as rich as bit.ly is NOT an incredibly simple thing to create. And twitter will need to incorporate such functionality in there, or people WILL find ways to use their favourites to get the functionality they're used to.
- mcav 17y agoThis is a prime example of the pitfalls of shortened URLs. Short URLs are pointers -- don't rely on them to point to the same thing (or a valid thing) forever.
- dryicerx 17y agoSame thought I've had ever since seeing he first URL shortning service.
- MicahWedemeyer 17y agoReal URLs have no guarantee of that either. http://whitehouse.com http://whitehouse.com doesn't get me the same sexy pics it did 10 years ago. That aside, you're right that an extra layer in there just adds more room for things to go wrong.
- jonknee 17y agoAnd here I thought just showing the toolbar and hijacking the URL was a scammy move... This has now become a textbook case of what is wrong with URL shorteners. Your links are at someone else's mercy. Even "reputable" firms like Digg can abuse your trust (I guess the investor's are leaning on them big time these days). Luckily this is easy to fix going forward: before sharing a link make sure it isn't using Digg's domain. If it is, resolve it and send the original. Rinse, repeat.
- lacker 17y agoBefore sharing a link make sure it isn't using Digg's domain. If it is, resolve it and send the original. Well, but the Digg short links are just redirecting to other Digg pages. So it's not straightforward to resolve it.
- jonknee 17y agoYou'll have to visit the link and copy the URL in the linked headline of the resulting Digg story. That's better than making people you send the link to have to jump through the same hoop.
- ivanstojic 17y agoHere we go again :-\
- jrockway 17y agoA link that says "digg.com" in the URL goes to digg.com? SAY IT AIN'T SO!!!!! Anyway, there is an easy solution to this problem. It's called using any one of the other 100 million URL shorteners.
- jm4 17y agoAgreed, although I think an even better solution is to not use URL shorteners at all. It could just as easily be one of the others that does something stupid next time.
- mahmud 17y agoThey advertised the service as a URL shortner; i.e. following a digg shortened URL should redirect original URL, not drop me in a digg landing page. <Dan Rather> When I throw a tennis ball at a wall I expect it to bounce back. I would be frightened if the ball sticks to the wall. </Dan Rather>
- jrockway 17y agoThe expression "slow news day" is applicable to both stories.
- dryicerx 17y agoI Disagree with your Solution. It's called using the real URL.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- joshu 17y agoCough.
- joshu 17y agoOh please. I totally called this.
- alex_c 17y agoKevin Rose claims he had no idea about this: http://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/2729862918 http://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/2729862918 just now reading the digg short url discussion, I was not aware this changed and will check in on it tomorrow (was on vacation for 2 weeks)
- kyro 17y agoApparently Kevin Rose knew about this, contrary to what he tweeted. From a TC comment referring to Leo Laporte interviewing Rose on TWIT: Leo Laporte had Digg co-founder Kevin Rose on his show and asked him about this. You can see it on Twit Live – the Diggbar discussion starts at the 11:26 mark. Here is an excerpt: * (Laporte gives Rose the background from an article on Techcrunch) * Laporte: Is that true? * Rose: That’s a good question. * Laporte: You don’t know? * Rose: I’ve been gone for 2 weeks so I don’t know what got pushed, what code got pushed and how it functions but my last understanding is that what we wanted to do is have it so that if you click on a Digg URL it takes you to the Digg stories so you can Digg it. Rather than providing a short URL service that just forwards and does redirection we would just do a URL service just for Digg articles. Just like the same way that Techcrunch does “techcrunch slash 85374″ – if you go to that you’re not going to go to some other site you’re going to go to techcrunch. That’s the story. * Laporte: So you’re backing off on the original idea which is a general URL shortening service… * Rose: Correct.
- jonknee 17y ago1) Advertise a new URL shortening service (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GTCeQP1eMc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GTCeQP1eMc) 2) Wait for new links to be created 3) Without telling anyone stop being a URL shortening service and keep all the links to yourself 4) Deny you knew it went on but then admit you knew exactly what went on ... 5) Profit?
- troels 17y agoSimple solution: Use actual URLs.
- nazgulnarsil 17y agoplease please don't bring headline tags to hacker news. I hate seeing "confirmed:", "breaking:" and all that crap.
- cdr 17y agoI have no idea why you're getting upvoted so much, or really why you're complaining about this submission - "Confirmed:" is the title of the article.
- mkyc 17y agoThere's no rule that says we should use the same vapid title here. I yearn for the day when I come to HN and find that either the submitters or the editors have decided to spoil every teaser and ReMove Those Damned Flow Impeding Capitals. From "Why Japan’s Cellphones Haven’t Gone Global" to "Hardware bulk prevents Japanese cellphone globalization". Throw on a subtitle! Don't worry, I know where to find the actual article title. Sure, don't change titles to something weird and unrecognizable, but half the time I have no idea what I'm in for. Spoil it for me, summarize the whole damn thing in the title if you can.
- Pistos2 17y agoI don't have a problem with this thread's title, but I have noticed that a non-negligible number of HN titles of late have been poorly chosen (i.e. fail to convey the gist of what is being linked to).
- icey 17y agoI'll admit it: I come to the comments section first on every story I visit; I saw his comment and agreed. I didn't realize when I upvoted it that the linked story had the "Confirmed:" in the headline, or I wouldn't have upvoted it. C'est la vie.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- steilpass 17y agoSo digg.com is not a typical url shortener anymore. So what? I've never used it that way. Now if you see a digg.com link it will take you to digg. You know what you get. Use it that way or don't.