
Show HN: Snip.ly, the link shortener that drives conversion - michaelcheng
http://snip.ly
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opendais
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
[https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Clickjacking](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Clickjacking)

I'm not seeing how encouraging end users to engage in behavior that sites
specifically turn off for security reasons as a 'good idea' regardless of the
marketing value..?

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jasonlotito
People see Airbnb as a good idea, this shouldn't be a surprise.

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opendais
I'd be just as surprised if people posted AirBnb on a site for lawyers in NYC
and the majority of lawyers thought it was a 'good idea'.

I fully expect the end users of this product to be oblivious to technical
minutiae like clickjacking. I was just expecting a stronger reaction to the
technical detail this relies on a tech-heavy start up site like Hacker News.

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incision
I'm a bit surprised at the amount of positive response. This impresses me as
rather obnoxious, probably effective, but obnoxious. Something between the
pop-over ad and the ever-present network TV promotional crawl brought to the
masses.

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rkuykendall-com
I see your point, but I see it as providing context to the links. This is
especially useful on Twitter where there is so little room for commentary.

The message is not showing up for no reason. You clicked a link from someone
you follow, because you wanted to usually BECAUSE of how that content relates
to them.

Sure, if you just change every link you send out to a link with an ad at the
bottom that is bad. But I see no problem with adding context and commentary to
a link someone is sharing on social media for that exact reason.

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ds9
Does anyone know what court precedents there are for a site owner O. suing
companies C. that present altered versions of O's site to third parties T,
without consent from O? Arguably C. is interfering in the relationship of O.
to T., wrongfully appropriating O's content for profit, and possibly defaming
O by making O. appear (to T.) to be associated with C.

If such actions are not legally ruled out, this service may invite them.

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aroch
Are you trying to ask if this could be tortuous interference with a business
relationship? Or if Snip.ly would be liable for libel/defamation of their
users by SiteA whose page was Snip.ly'd?

The former, possibly depending on the ToS of the site and how creative your
lawyers can be. The latter, probably not; see 17 U.S. Code § 512, aka Safe
Harbor for online posts.

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BorisMelnik
I really like this as well. Sure it could be used for evil, but so can a zip
tie if used for the wrong reasons.

Already thinking of a ton of ways this can be used. Don't love that you have
to sign-up for this but I suppose it is necessary.

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codecondo
What are these "tons of ways" you're talking about?

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eliot_sykes
I'm not sure about this. Mmm. My gut feeling is I wouldn't feel too cool about
using it, and I'd _guess_ that if you gave news sites the chance to opt-in to
being framed, not many would take Snip.ly up on it.

But I might be missing the full picture, and perhaps I'm just not the target
audience.

Good luck to Snip.ly, but for developers who would want to stop this kind of
thing from happening on their own sites, OWASP has a clickjacking defense
cheat sheet:

[https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Clickjacking_Defense_Cheat_S...](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Clickjacking_Defense_Cheat_Sheet)

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mixedbit
How a user is supposed to know what site is behind the snip.ly URL? This is a
phishing heaven.

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Elof
I'm all for being creative in marketing... but this kinda seems like link bait
spam. Interested in seeing if/how companies use it, but hoping it doesn't turn
into ads for weightloss and sex enhancing pills.

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laoba
I really like it! You know one thing that's not great though?? I cannot get
back to just snip.ly once I'm logged in! It keeps kicking me to the dashboard
when I want to be on the homepage!

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laoba
Also, I couldn't use Snip.ly on itself! But maybe that's on purpose :)

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laoba
Last reply, but turns out that I did [http://snip.ly](http://snip.ly) and
forgot the www! Amateur mistake :)

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electic
This is not good. Consumers will eventually recognize that snip.ly links offer
annoying experiences and they would not click on them over time. Thus, your
conversion might actually decrease.

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Grae
I, for one, welcome our new branded linking overlords.

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frade33
I am pretty sure, this service is not going to thrive, because people will
never click snip.ly urls once they know what it is, and contains user-ad which
hinders user-exprience on the linked article. Is this too hard to figure?

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bagels
Sniply is going to start stuffing their own ads in that bar eventually. It's a
shrewd move by sniply to collect advertising revenue from traffic of other
sites.

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AznHisoka
Thanks. I can now use this instead of proxies to scrape Google </evil
unintended use>

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eli
Neat, but I would worry using it would annoy people. What's the ideal use case
you imagine?

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yatoomy
Clearly can be good for advertisers, way to bypass having to buy an add
inorder to advertise

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deft
This is a really great idea although slightly evil. Could be quite useful
though. Nice job!

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ShaneCurran
Nice work! The design is really clean and I really like the concept. Keep it
up!

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alizhd
Cool idea. I saw betakit using this the other day.

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ASquare
I like this idea.

Is it really free to use?

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BrainInAJar
That's really spammy and gross. You are what's wrong with the internet today.

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Grae
Bill Hicks said it best, so I'll leave it to him:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo)

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sixQuarks
Whenever HN "hivemind" thinks something is bad because they wouldn't
personally use it, that's a good sign that it will be successful with
consumers.

