Steven, I don't think anyone would argue that shorteners are *good* for the Internet, but they are a here to stay and a necessity given the fact that a URL can be an unbounded length according to the HTTP RFC. Of course, the reality is that the most common way of accessing URLs, browsers, will only interpret at their lowest common denominator about 2,100 characters (Opera will accept a 200,000+ character URL). Still, that's a ton of text to copy n' paste 80 characters at a time due to the text-handling rules and conventions set forth in the email RFC. And that was before sharing via SMS even popularized the services!
Your argument against shorteners also implies that link rot doesn't occur outside of shorteners. There are null pointers and black holes now. A shortening service could live on into eternity and there would be absolutely no guarantee that the redirect still pointed to a hosted resource or even that the resource had not changed outside of the original context with which it was shared. A google search for Geocities come November should provide a ton of examples. I think that sites providing their own shortened URL (such as flic.kr) are a good start. The shortened URLs are reasonably guaranteed to live as long the originals. I also like services that recognize and resolve shortened URLs for me so that the destination is no longer obfuscated (http://search.twitter.com does this). - RYAN JOY http://twitter.com/atxryan On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Steven Harms<[email protected]> wrote: > > At the risk of failing to lament Caesar's passing with sufficient > grief and a plea of moderate ignorance about all the features of > bit.ly, let me just say that I have concerns that URL shortening is a > Bad Thing For the Internet (tm). > > The beauty of the Uniform Resource Locator is that it was a Uniform > address for Locating Resources. What does a URL shortener do? It > gives you a URI to a re-direct. If the URL shortener goes away, you > have null pointers, internet black holes. > > Pragmatically I understand the URL shortener, it helps with byte > counts in limited buffers so that you can share your wit + the picture > of the panda sneezing in < 140 characters. Yet when I use a shortener > I not relying that someday in the future people will not go to bit.ly/ > fu.c12 to see my beautiful missive on dancing with the stars as > communist allegory. > > If we become an internet whose history of links are enmeshed in > shortened URLs bit.ly personae, I believe that we're doing a Bad > Thing. Is no one else concerned with this, or is there some feature > of bit.ly that creates "permalinks?" I see something on bit.ly's blog > about a wayback machine ... but still I feel like this is not entirely > in line with building web of data that benefits humans as well as > machines. > > Steven > > > > On Aug 10, 2009, at 12:10 PM, [email protected] wrote: > >> >> According to TechCrunch there is a reason why Twitter switched to >> bit.ly >> >> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/06/url-shortening-wars-twitter-ditches-tinyurl-for-bitly/ >> >> For me url shortening was purely for url shortening so I've been using >> is.gd since it seemed to generate short urls and it was supported by >> TweetDeck. It's quite possible that I might have been using tr.im if >> they listed it higher on their list of supported services. >> >> Considering the Twitterspace, unless you're backed by a VC or intend >> it to be a loss leader the competition seems pretty wide which >> apparently doesn't seem to be the case for tr.im. They mention they >> looked into getting bought. They might have a great service, but >> unless there's a feasible revenue model associated with it, I suspect >> potential buyers are going to be very limited. If they were hoping to >> be acquired by Twitter, I wouldn't have hoped on that, given that >> Twitter is not generating revenue as far as I know. As far as I can >> tell, it doesn't look like they had a realistic business plan in place >> given the landscape. >> >> tr.im does seem to be a good name, but for me short urls are >> unreadible when I look at it in whole. I still don't know what I'm >> clicking on per se, so whether it starts with http://tr.im/ or http://bit.ly/ >> I really don't see one being superior over another name-wise. If >> anything, I'd probably chose which one generated the shortest url so >> as to save space in my tweet. Furthermore, what the url shortening >> service is branded seems less important when you consider how it will >> be primarily used. Once integrated with an app, visibility of the >> brand is probably going to be negligible. A lot of Twitter apps >> provide url shortening either via a built in tool or automagically. >> >> I haven't been using it, but as I've mentioned, I could care less what >> the service was called. And if TechCrunch's research is correct, >> Twitter picked bit.ly because of several factors. >> >> - >> Warren >> > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Our Web site: http://www.RefreshAustin.org/ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Refresh Austin" group. [ Posting ] To post to this group, send email to [email protected] Job-related postings should follow http://tr.im/refreshaustinjobspolicy We do not accept job posts from recruiters. [ Unsubscribe ] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] [ More Info ] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Refresh-Austin -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
