
URL Shorteners – the herpes of the web - nreece
http://www.inquisitr.com/22264/url-shorteners-the-herpes-of-the-web/
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chrisbolt
ContentLink ads - the chlamydia of the web

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buugs
Maybe because the problem is arising people will move to short urls on their
own sites so that they don't even need to be shortened for twitter and such,
because honestly the problem isn't that the urls are redirecting its that the
urls need to be redirected because of an unnecessary long url for clarity.

In all honesty I don't know very many people that look at the full url before
they click on it; the domain name does most of the work and the description
accompanying the url does the rest.

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varjag
" Maybe because the problem is arising people will move to short urls on their
own sites so that they don't even need to be shortened for twitter and such,
because honestly the problem isn't that the urls are redirecting its that the
urls need to be redirected because of an unnecessary long url for clarity."

And this is the part I never quite understood. Does _anyone_ really type in
the URLs? Folks click, or at best copy and paste. Did anyone here for once
typed in that <http://tinyurl.com/yadayada> stuff?

What exact problem URL shortener addresses, aside from (maybe) miniscule
adjustment of aesthetics?

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josefresco
Where's the herpes come in? Herpes is spread by human contact, is a very
common virus (1 in 4/5 depending on who you ask) sooo where's the connection?
Is it that simply there's lots of URL shorteners?

Another linkbait article title that fails to live up to it's intention.

My next article headline: Linkbait Article Titles - the Herpes of the
blogosphere.

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vyrotek
So we have a problem. What's the solution? Use something like
<http://www.snap.com> all over the place? Seems like that being able to see
where the shortURL leads is one way to counter it.

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potatolicious
How about non-confusing URLs, and stop using query strings in place of URLs?

<http://www.someone.tld/products/coolthing/>

is better than

[http://www.someone.tld/page?type=product&id=2386712&...](http://www.someone.tld/page?type=product&id=2386712&lang=en_us)

If you wanted to push this further, use your own permalink on your site,
something like:

<http://p.somesite.tld/23a44fd>

It's not descriptive, but at least it gives you credit for the page.

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DannoHung
I'd argue that the majority of people that are using URL shorteners have a
more fundamental problem: They don't even realize that most of the params
aren't needed.

For example, I recently looked at this King Hokum CD on Amazon (awesome artist
BTW, this CD is stupid overpriced though):
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012U346Y/ref=s9_sims_gw_s...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012U346Y/ref=s9_sims_gw_s2_p15_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0T627SFJ995DPDR7SZHP&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846)

What's the relevant part?

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012U346Y>

But how the hell does someone know that without dicking around?!

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rizzn
That still won't help someone who's trying to paste it into Twitter or a
Facebook status feed.

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tlrobinson
Those are problems that should be solved by Twitter and Facebook. Give people
a way to put a link with shorter link text, something simple like Markdown
[text](url) format.

If the message is being sent to SMS or some other constrained medium, _then_
automatically shorten it. Chances are that link won't be distributed beyond
the device it's sent to anyway.

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mr_justin
Or a completely different take on this "issue".

[http://garrettdimon.com/archives/2009/4/13/the_downside_of_p...](http://garrettdimon.com/archives/2009/4/13/the_downside_of_permanent/)

