

Facebook jumps into the short URL space with fb.me - seldo
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/12/14/facebook-testing-new-url-shortener-fb-me/

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axod
"short URL space"? There's a 'space' for these now? Next it'll be called a
business sector or something.

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seldo
There a good dozen or so companies all doing the same thing; how many more do
you need before you call it a "space"?

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axod
There's a good number of beginner programmers that write HelloWorld
applications. But it doesn't really make it a 'space'.

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jsz0
I would use a URL shortener that included _some_ description of the
destination site. Perhaps just the domain name minus the top level. So
something like:

xx.yy/nytimes- _unique identifier_

The shortness of the URL doesn't really matter all that much does it? From
what I can tell they are used mostly for stat tracking. People are still
mostly clicking or copy/pasting them. 5-8 more characters isn't going to hurt.

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middus
Yet another one? Quoting mcav "Just when I thought the URL shortener fad was
on the way out..." <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=995050>

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mcav
Augh. Yet another! When will the madness end?

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quizbiz
Does anyone understand why?

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akkartik
Today's URL shorteners are yesterday's redirect links. Used to be that we
hated redirects and avoided them if we could; now Twitter has suddenly made
them cool. If you get people to use your redirects/shortener you gain access
to all those delicious traffic analytics on where the eyeballs are going
today. Hence the land grab by google and fb in what used to be bitly's private
domain.

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mattlanger
> land grab by google

If anyone else was confused by this, I believe it is in reference to
<http://goo.gl>

I had not heard of that project until just now. It's nice to see they're
giving it some thought rather than just slapping something together, but I'd
love to see "longevity" added to the project goals.

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seldo
They might join something like <http://301works.org>, which aims to archive
short URLs even after the company goes away.

Although I'm not sure why people are so terrified of short links breaking;
_long_ URLs are constantly disappearing.

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snprbob86
Long URLs constantly disappear, but only one root at a time. If Wikipedia
disappeared tomorrow, all the Wikipedia links would break, but URL shorteners
consolidate roots. If bit.ly disappeared tomorrow, it's not just one site that
is affected. Furthermore, the use of a redirect breaks traditional mirroring
systems. You can't just prepend somemirror.com to the path and expect it to
work.

