
How (not) to Fix URL Shorteners - nreece
http://tweete.rs/blog/how-to-fix-url-shorteners-my-take/
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thisduck
URL shortening services have been around for a long time, with the recognition
that they weren't permanent. The recent issue with URL shorteners is because
Twitter has created a false need for them.

What twitter ought to do is assign a fixed character length to all urls. So if
you place _any_ url in your tweet, you get docked 16 characters (that's a
reasonable length since a URL shortening service would shorten the URL to
about that length). Then just stick the actual URL in the href, and have some
generic URL text that is visible.

Now, this might not work for mobile devices that receive tweets. Perhaps
twitter should buy one of the URL shortening services, so that if it dies,
then all the tweets die, and we no longer care if the links are valid anymore.

The need for permanent shortened URLs is a false need.

~~~
chrisbolt
Twitter could do bit.ly links only when sending via SMS, and then do normal
links via the API and web interface, just shortening the link text with ...

I don't see any reason for them not to do this.

