
Bit.ly Swoops in to Save Tr.im - onreact-com
http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/shorturl-savior/
======
seldo
The longevity of short URLs (or any form of redirect) is their primary
drawback. Having one company bail out another is not a long-term strategy. The
only long-term way to make sure redirects continue to function is to have some
kind of open, federated redirect service (which might be what 301works is
trying to achieve). However, the kind of flexibility inherent in a federated
service implies that the links would not be very short (e.g.
301works.com/bit.ly/abcdef), so they would at best be a backup solution.

The long-term solution for shortlinks is very unclear, as long as services
(and who are we kidding: we mean Twitter) require them. Twitter could solve it
by allowing metadata around links, but that would break their 140-character
protocol, which has been a big factor in their success.

I don't have a solution, or I'd be building a startup around it right now :-)

~~~
brk
_Twitter could solve it by allowing metadata around links_

Twitter could also solve it by upping the 140 character limit to something
more reasonable. Any magic reason for the 140 char limit is pretty much gone
now.

In the end, I don't know how much any of this matters, Twitter seems overrun
by marketeers and self-promoters now, hard to tell if there is enough of a
future in it for the URL shorteners to really have much of a future.

~~~
steveklabnik
> Any magic reason for the 140 char limit is pretty much gone now.

This is incredibly short-sighted. I, for one, still only use Twitter via text.
If Twitter allowed for longer messages, I'd be out, as would many of the
people that I know.

The plural of anecdote is not data, but just becasue everyone you know uses an
app, does not mean that everyone does. I'm sure txt is still _really
important_ to Twitter overall.

~~~
Luc
Does your phone and provider not support long SMS messages? (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenated_SMS> ).

~~~
steveklabnik
I have no idea. My phone probably doesn't support them, though. It's pretty
terrible. Free is better than paying, unfortunatly.

~~~
rythie
My nokia 8310 that had in 2001/2 supported it so maybe your phone does

~~~
steveklabnik
Verizon's phones are notoriously crippled. I'd expect Nokia to have thier act
together, though.

~~~
rythie
That was here in the U.K. I think all networks do and have supported it here
for a long time.

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mrkurt
Bit.ly's not the only one who's made this offer. Whether the tr.im people see
it as a helping hand or an opportunity to sell their stuff, though, is up to
them.

I have half a feeling that this whole deal was designed to instigate a buyout.
It certainly got enough peoples' attention.

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terpua
Sounds like Bit.ly is offering hosting services. Swoops in to save...that's
going a bit far (unless they offer cash).

~~~
noodle
swoops in to save trim's link structure, is more like it.

but, its a smart move. it helps to validate bitly, both in what its doing and
as the leader of its space. makes link redirection seem like it could be more
stable.

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bkudria
Why do we need URL shorteners again?

~~~
blhack
because twitter limits you to 140 characters of input.

~~~
tlrobinson
The real solution would be for Twitter to not count URLs against the 140
character limit.

~~~
c3o
But wasn't the requirement that a tweet fit into an SMS? How relevant the SMS
medium still is to Twitter is another question...

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onreact-com
This would be a truly wise move in the long run. If I read the article right
there is no official announcement yet, is it?

~~~
jacquesm
It looks like they're in contact but no deal has been reached, and it is
implied that there are some sour grapes because of the blog post line quoted,
but that's speculation only.

I'm very curious how this will turn out. This was a very short lifecycle for a
service, but in the long run this is to be expected for just about every
website. Stuff gets created and it dies again.

Url shorteners exist in the first place because of bad design in the websites
that need to have their links shortened.

Plenty of websites that I'm familiar with have overlong urls, some to the
point of being ridiculous.

Maybe sites should employ their own internal url shortening service, where
'<http://somesite.com/shorturl> gets mapped to the real url. That way the
short urls will live as long as the site.

~~~
seldo
Oh, and re: the idea of internal URL shorteners, Google's suggestion for
rel=canonical

[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-y...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-
your-canonical.html)

is a way to allow those to exist without destroying your pagerank. However,
I'm not seeing them too widely implemented yet.

~~~
mseebach
I'd think a 301 Moved Permanently is more appropriate - and also how many URL
shorteners work today.

