
Shorten this - flapjack
http://www.zeldman.com/2009/08/10/shorten-this/
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ZachPruckowski
Fundamentally, the problem I see with the URL-shortening "market" is that
there's almost no entry-cost, it's cheap to run, and the margins are very
small.

How much code is a URL-shortening service? Like 50 lines of code + a mysql
table? It's like a day's work, maybe two, to handle 90% of the features people
need. And it's like a few MB of database and almost no processing power for
each request.

And there's like no lock-in. I have no reason to use bit.ly over TinyURL or
=>.ws, because they're all nearly the same, and it's not like they'll retro-
actively break the links if I use another service.

As a result, they're competing with almost zero differentiating features in a
market with no entry costs, no lock-in, and no obvious way to monetize.
There's no way most of these services are going to stick around when they
realize this.

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pwim
Except if someone tweets a link like
<http://www.zeldman.com/2009/08/10/shorten-this/>, it will get shortened by a
3rd party shortener.

~~~
jerf
I don't use Twitter. Would it automatically shorten
<http://zeldman.com/?p=2233> ? Does it just shorten all links, or just ones
that need to be shortened?

I'm assuming all, since non-shortened links can't be "monetized". (Feh.)

~~~
Semiapies
It doesn't shorten all links.

Personally, I suspect the real source of the objection to URL shorteners is
that they break referrer tracking and other sorts of ad-related analysis.

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Semiapies
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.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
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
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
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
TinyURL's been around since 2002. <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.

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brandon272
I find that orange background to be obnoxious. I wouldn't want to read his
blog for more than a minute or so. But maybe that's what he was going for? ;)

