3 ms·

Considering how many links from TinyURL and other sites I've made that still work fine, but point to URIs that 404 without any redirection or sensible handling

Considering how many links from TinyURL and other sites I've made that still work fine, but point to URIs that 404 without any redirection or sensible handling by the host, I remain unimpressed with this image of zillions of useless, shortened links choking the web. That said, bits like this suggest that it might be slowly dawning on people that in 2009, we don't need mile-long URIs.

joshu 17y ago
Again, it's not literally the issue of "zillions" of bad links. It's that adding it's yet another party in the middle that might fail, dissapear, etc at an inconvenient time. What if your business relied on tr.im, for example, when they dissapeared? What if you'd used them in print so they were easy to type in?
- Semiapies 17y ago
  (Not literal zillions?! :) ) Yes, I get the additional point-of-failure concern. Except, in practice, the points of failure seem to be squarely on the provider end, not the shortener in the middle.
ZachPruckowski 17y ago
It's a point-of-failure issue. As a general rule of thumb, dependencies are bad. They introduce "uncontrollable" risk into things. Obviously, websites and bloggers and web-apps can't do much about having the Internet as a dependency, but I don't want to have half my publicity for my content* reliant on a web service that could well be completely fly-by-night. * - At this stage in my life, such publicity and content are only hypothetical :(
- Semiapies 17y ago
  Fly-by-night is to be avoided in all things. I would recommend picking a shortener that's been around more than a short while and seems healthy, certainly - just as I would recommend picking a hosting company that has the same qualities.
  - ZachPruckowski 17y ago
    Even the major shortening services are fly-by-night relative to other services one depends on. They're even fly-by-night relative to Twitter, for the most part, much less something like Wordpress, and infinitely less than something like Google or Apache.
    - Semiapies 17y ago
      TinyURL's been around since 2002. http://tinyurl.com/a http://tinyurl.com/a still works. How many of those TinyURL links lead to pages and sites that no longer exist? Now, if your site is something that you're serious about keeping up over the long term, including retaining or properly redirecting all the URIs you offer, great - you're ahead of most of the web. However, if you don't want people to shorten your URIs, then you'll want to make short URIs.

joshu 17y ago

Again, it's not literally the issue of "zillions" of bad links. It's that adding it's yet another party in the middle that might fail, dissapear, etc at an inconvenient time. What if your business relied on tr.im, for example, when they dissapeared? What if you'd used them in print so they were easy to type in?

Semiapies 17y ago
(Not literal zillions?! :) ) Yes, I get the additional point-of-failure concern. Except, in practice, the points of failure seem to be squarely on the provider end, not the shortener in the middle.

ZachPruckowski 17y ago

It's a point-of-failure issue. As a general rule of thumb, dependencies are bad. They introduce "uncontrollable" risk into things. Obviously, websites and bloggers and web-apps can't do much about having the Internet as a dependency, but I don't want to have half my publicity for my content* reliant on a web service that could well be completely fly-by-night. * - At this stage in my life, such publicity and content are only hypothetical :(

Semiapies 17y ago
Fly-by-night is to be avoided in all things. I would recommend picking a shortener that's been around more than a short while and seems healthy, certainly - just as I would recommend picking a hosting company that has the same qualities.
- ZachPruckowski 17y ago
  Even the major shortening services are fly-by-night relative to other services one depends on. They're even fly-by-night relative to Twitter, for the most part, much less something like Wordpress, and infinitely less than something like Google or Apache.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    TinyURL's been around since 2002. http://tinyurl.com/a http://tinyurl.com/a still works. How many of those TinyURL links lead to pages and sites that no longer exist? Now, if your site is something that you're serious about keeping up over the long term, including retaining or properly redirecting all the URIs you offer, great - you're ahead of most of the web. However, if you don't want people to shorten your URIs, then you'll want to make short URIs.