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Why I'm starting to hate short URLs
I understand why short URL services are handy, and I know that there are times when you simply have to use them. How else are you to cram giant links in Twitter's miniscule 140 character limit?My problem isn't so much with the truncators themselves. Bit.ly, is.gd, TinyURL, Digg, Ping.fm - I don't have a beef with the service you're providing. I'm also not all that concerned with the recent shouts about how one of those services being compromised could make reaching thousands of shared links impossible.
The thing that's really pissing me off is the way shortened links are being utilized.
Example. If you're browsing a social news site and you find a cool story, you post a tweet with a link to, say, the Digg submission or Slashdot article. Why? You'd rather share a snippet or summary with us than the actual article? Why make your followers and friends jump through an additional hoop?
Worse still are truncators with preview pages, like the one that got me started on this rant. A bit.ly link in my Twitter stream which TweetDeck couldn't expand for me sent me to a preview page. The preview page sent me to a Slashdot item. From there, I was finally able to access the original post.
Enough is enough. It's a waste of bandwidth, time, and it's a needless annoyance. If you read a post and you like it, go ahead and use a truncator. But for crying out loud - point it directly to the item of interest and spare me the song and dance.
Comments
15
Subscribe to commentsmbeebe4Apr 9th 2009 2:09PM
boo freaking hoo
jkroederApr 9th 2009 3:34PM
Not to mention they're a huge headache when it comes to spammers and others using them for malicious purposes
oZoneApr 9th 2009 2:52PM
I'm completely agree, that shit gets ridiculous sometimes.
DonaldApr 9th 2009 2:58PM
This is why HugeURL (http://www.hugeurl.com/) was invented.
Sam JordanApr 9th 2009 4:50PM
Ha, that is awesome. Good job.
gonintendoApr 9th 2009 7:31PM
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Michael K PateApr 9th 2009 3:26PM
This seems to be a popular topic of late.
http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners.html
AILApr 9th 2009 4:08PM
holy gawd you are a whiner of impressive magnitude
sodapopApr 9th 2009 4:30PM
I don't think someone who writes for a blog can complain about people who blog blog posts. Tongue tied?
Steve GApr 9th 2009 4:42PM
Short URLs are a life saver. Have you SEEN the size of URLs in a SharePoint system???
Don't blame short URLs in general if some people use them in a stupid fashion.
As I'm not a twitterer (i.e. I'm a boring old fart!) I don't see the problems you have.
Steve
QuikboyApr 9th 2009 5:03PM
I just send regular URLs through IM or e-mail instead - much simpler.
GenericApr 9th 2009 7:16PM
Thanks Lee Mathews for pointing this out. I use Power Twitter extension with Firefox to show me the sites that the link leads to but IMHO it is not a perfect solution.
Anyone out there knows an extension that shows the actual link?
chris josephApr 9th 2009 9:35PM
merlin mann said it better a few days earlier. just saying...
Bruno PadinhaApr 10th 2009 5:21AM
It may not be the case with Digg, but on Slashdot, frequently, the article itself condenses the idea and gives an opinion, sometimes providing a much broader context to the subject, so if you like the "editorial line", it makes all the sense to steer people to the blog instead of the article, to give them the full picture.
Actually, that's why I frequently direct people to posts in DLS instead of just the link to the apps.
KevinApr 21st 2009 12:33AM
Tinyurl ftw.