Comments on: URL shortening is hot--but look before you leap

Fueled by Twitter's popularity, services to abbreviate Web addresses are taking off. They bring a host of problems, but some are working to fix them.

And don't forget that it is increasingly common for larger companies to install their own internal URL Shorteners such as this one for SharePoint.

http://www.muhimbi.com/blog/2009/06/reducing-size-of-urls-using-mush.html

[Shankland]

Yes, including the more controversial ones from Digg and StumbleUpon that frame the results. If you're interested in this angle, check out RevCanonical, which searches for the canonical HTML tag to see if a publisher has supplied its own shortened URL: http://revcanonical.appspot.com/

Dopplr, Threadless, and Songza expose shortened URLs in this way, according to Songza co-founder Scott Robbin, who wrote a Firefox widget to find and show publishers' short URLs through the canonical tag: http://srobbin.com/blog/tinyfinder-a-jetpack-widget/

I always found it ironic that one of the shorter link services sometimes ended up producing longer URL's than the original. I'm referring to "makeashorterlink.com". Really, what were they thinking? But thankfully, common sense has prevailed after TinyURL has come along and acquired this service.

[kieranmullen]

drlinky.com ?

[Khurt]

Twitter clients like Tweetie and TweetDeck have a feature that allows the user to preview short URLs before jumping through to the destination site.

[JasonGooljar]

All these services are great but what I want to learn is how to create my own personal link shortening service :) You know Techcrunch has their own as does Flickr now. If someone started a service where you can brand your own link shortening URL that would be cool. Kind of like the Ning idea but for link shortening.

[Shankland]

Some of the companies are working on white-label shortening services to permit this, but it doesn't look to me like it'll be free.

[voislapp]

we created www.pie.im with the specific goal of having a cute name for the pizza events it was being used for on www.pizzatweetup.com. Also rev2 has a pretty in depth look at the rest http://www.rev2.org/2009/06/18/the-best-url-shorteners-for-twitter/

[twitter_1963]

the problem is simple. These twitter services should not COUNT the URL string in it's message length and allow a meaning user defined name.

We keep making life difficult for ourselves and never look for the simplest solutions.

[Shankland]

If it were only Twitter making up its own rules, that might well be possible, but for compatibility with SMS text messages, there are hard limits on actual character used.

[odubtaig]

The whole point of the URL shortening is so the link can be passed through systems which may not accept anything other than plain text such as SMS or aggregators. If you add in the facility to use anchor tags or similar it becomes inaccessible to these.

[twitter_1963]

See, people who don't want to innovate lead from behind - and stay there. Your are posting the problems, not the solutions. I don't have all the answers but here are some suggestions;

1. Shorten automatically at the server (Verizon, AT&T, VodaFone etc.,) so any URLS are shortened if the known "receiver" has a 140 byte limit or send "URL'S" separately in next message if 140 limit reached.
2. In Twitter (online) show the full URL but don't count the bytes in the 140 limit
3. SPlit the tweet and "links" so any tweet with links that exceed 140 gets submitted as 2 tweets with a "link" - visual or otherwise.

Shortening a URL is pathetic. It's like me having to remember a 26 digit phone number. 18th Century solution to a 21st century problem. better brains than I CAN crack it.

[odubtaig]

Yes, your solution seems to be to ignore the cost of sending SMS messages, have tweets consisting of a URL and nothing else and somehow organise everyone on the internet to shorten URL length even though this would completely bugger SEO and a number of other things.

See, the reason the answer seems simple to you is because you don't have full comprehension of the problem. I mean, seriously, you think no-one else has thought of these things? Of course they have, they've then thought why they'd be impossible to implement.

[twitter_1963]

Do YOU really think tweeters give a hoot about the cost of an extra txt msg?

1. If they really have an issue with text msg cost, they won't be following many people so another one or two texts occasionally won't break the bank.
2. Remember, this isn't for ALL the time, this is for when a tweet goes over the 140 bytes and contains a URL that's too long
3. Optionally it could allow you to turn it off on your network (i.e. no LINK TWEETS if your on a naff txt plan).

I have FULL comprehension of the problem, I said I think the current solution sucks and it does. In fact, for 2009 it's embarrassing for the tech world to not have a better solution and to assume that many tweeters even have a clue as to what we are talking about. They seem links to places they might not trust (and have been told NOT to trust).

i don't care my idea sucks - it probably does - I just want the tech heads to get off their back-sides and propose something better than this pathetic work-around, cludge.

It's laughable, like when the Iphone had no copy and paste :)

[ArsFragica]

i will never trust a tinyurl again after clicking on one that was suppose to lead me to a news article instead if lead me to a pornographic ridden website. i might even sue the makers of tinyurl just for not verifying what site they are linking to.

[Shankland]

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "verifying"--it's one thing to use a blacklist to screen out porn sites, but it's an entirely separate thing to try to police what kind of context people put around embedded URLs. I think it would be darned near impossible, not to mention objectionable for various reasons, for TinyURL or whoever to reject some tweet before it's sent because I apparently am using some misleading description of the URL. Do you mean that the preview page at TinyURL (you can get to it by adding "preview" before the URL, e.g. http://preview.tinyurl.com/xzy123).

[ry_jones]

lnk.nu (http://lnk.nu/about.html) shows you the domain and file extension; it's been around for a while.

[mattharms]

Doesn't tinyurl also make money by throwing their affiliate codes onto Amazon (and other shopping websites) links?

[craigoooo]

Here is another free service for URL shorting also file uploading . Http://www.shareHub.com. This one is pretty new but works very well!

[Captain Bebops]

The real problem is bad web design with long URLs to begin with. It's often the result of finding someone to design a pretty web site but no ability to think what will happen down the road with they way they're referencing articles. Some sites are putting the full article heading as the reference. Way too long! Some sites just have a folder with a number that get indexed once an article is published. That results in shorter URLs though it doesn't provide any clue on the article content.

[Sporlo]

Completely agree. Whenever I visit a new website and happen to look at the URLs being used, I always think "Thank you to whoever made this website for being smart enough to design it efficiently and logically" or "*** is with these URLs? I have no idea where I am now!" etc. :P
I also get really annoyed when there're ? or & tags after the regular URL that says where you clicked the link. For example, the address I'm at now has ?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1 after the .html. I hate those! Maybe it's for analytics, but I wish it would just tell the owner, not me. It's worse if someone else sends me a link and they don't bother to remove the reference tag.

Anyway, I dislike URL shorteners in general. I REALLY like actually looking at the URL to see where I'm going to be taken. I think it'd just be easier for the shortened URL to go to a page with JUST the real URL and you can click one more time to go to the real site. One extra click will not harm anyone.

[jake3373]

The ?tag=blahblah is for analytics, and they really have no other way of finding out how the user got to the page (ie. toolbar, footer, email, etc.)
I find that it really doesn't make a difference to me, unless I copy/paste a URL into an email and it is: http://www.example.com/page.html?from=header and the website will think I got to the page by clicking a link in the header!

[paulej]

Can we thank Google for this? It seems to me that Google ranks pages I'm looking for higher when those words are actually part of the URL. Perhaps I'm wrong, but that's the impression I get, anyway. I can't otherwise explain why it is that the titles of articles appear in the URL on so many sites.

[crazysmoove]

Great article. I wrote a column recently for "Ask the PropellerHeads" that covers the same topic for those new to the concept: http://www.data-directions.com/atp/View.aspx?page=articles/internetgroup#

[Rob_Lockhart]

Interesting article. However, tweets follow GSM's single block text message limit of 160 characters, not 140. If the carriers wanted, though, they could do multi-block text messages. Most mobile phones have the ability to re-integrate the multi-block messages into one message.

[twitter_1963]

Good idea. Your right, the 140 limit (or 160) should be extended when it contains a URL. I think we'll see text messages included as part of most plans (unlimited) soon anyway. It's headed that way.

[n3td3v]

If you use Twitter Search, you click on "expand" on a search result and Twitter will display the full URL the short URL goes to without visiting the web site its self.

This is a handy feature, it means I don't goto a phishing site by mistake.

[Maccess]

A problem with URL shorteners is that when the site goes under, the domain may be taken up by a porn or malware promoter, and when your recipients re-check the link several months later, they're taken to a porn or malware site.

[paulej]

How is that different than www.whateverthegoodsitewas.com being taken and re-used for porno? The URL shortner makes absolutely no difference.

[Weudel]

You re-check Tweets months later? Really? Well, I guess when your shortener goes down, make sure you Tweet it out to everybody... And, um, if you're interested in something bookmark it, so you don't have to look back at Tweets months later....

[Heebee Jeebies]

Why doesn't Twitter shorten the URL's and put the shortened ones in? This seems like something they should be doing if they want to impose a 140 character message.

[jsobrier]

"There's brand value in being seen as a shortening service that can be trusted." That is why I created Safe.mn (http://safe.mn). Checking the URL is not enough, you need to follow all redirections, and check the final content. Safe.mn does this on each link, and againe very 24 hours to catch any change. if a URL is flagged as unsafe, it shows a warning to the user instead of a redirection.

[creativebot]

I completely agree. They are now more dangerous than ever. Someone could tweet about an article and put a shortened link and it could lead to god knows what. I think that if we take away from the visualization of where the link is going, it causes problems and maybe even chaos.

[dmjcalma]

I believe that savvy tweeters know how to overcome these obstacles. We just need to get everyone more savvy. That's why I started http://tw-utorial.com to help people learn the best practices that are used by those who are more savvy with social networking online.
This was a great article, but I don't have the same panic that others seem to have expressed, in terms of shortened url's being dangerous. Everything is dangerous online...we just need to understand what we're doing, and help others understand. That's also a reason I love Cnet...you all are so very helpful.
8)

[cnetmadzoo]

Has anybody user http://g-url.biz ? I have used the site and you can add a keyword to your short domain. For example if you have a URL http://myproduct/cnet/product1/campaing1.html you could shorten it to http://g-url.biz/cnet so long as the keyword has not already been taken.