Twi.bz: the transparent URL shortener | Hacker News Reader

Twi.bz: the transparent URL shortener

twi.bz

50 pointsjgrahamc72 comments

You might end up having some trademark issues. For example, I could see Amazon not being too happy with the example link http://amazon.twi.bz/a.

The other thing that I see is that for a URL shortener, the above is 22 characters. What about if you were linking to a page here. For example, a link to this page is http://ycombinator.twi.bz/b. That's 27 characters.

If you are going to use a URL shortener (not that I'm suggesting that it is a good idea), why use one that is so verbose (relatively speaking)?

So, I'm not sure that there is a sweet spot here. You have people on one side that will never _ever_ use a URL shortener. On the other side, you have people that want the smallest link possible. There isn't much space in the middle (IMHO).

The flip side for Amazon is that since it's clear that link is going to Amazon you are more likely to click on it which means more business for Amazon.

Not every usage for url shorteners is for twitter. I personally don't use twitter, but when I send long links to my mother via e-mail, she has trouble unless I use a url shrinking service. I'd much prefer one that shows the domain outside of extremely space constricted environments.

If your mom has trouble opening large links, she's probably not the type to be comforted by a subdomain. If the link is from her son she's going to click it.

A similar service is DecentURL. It generally has slightly longer URLs, but lets you put your own descriptive string in the link, in addition to adding the target's domain as the link's subdomain.

http://decenturl.com/

thats a remarkable service. They take this ugly url: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ [38 characters] and turn it into this pretty url: http://youtube.decenturl.com/medieval-help-desk [47 characters]

their "pretty" url is much longer than the original one. What the hell!?

Yep, adding information often means adding space.

On the other hand, you can shorten http://www.amazon.com/Depends-What-Youre-At/dp/B001DQF7VW/re... [109 characters] to http://amazon.decenturl.com/depends [37 characters], which adds information and also saves space.

Yep, that's exactly the kind of thing DecentURL's for. Though it's even better for modifying (say) YouTube URLs which don't have any meaning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4cmrMJul1g turns into http://youtube.decenturl.com/mr-bean-swimming

Hmm, now I wonder why YouTube doesn't offer 'prettyfied' urls so we don't have to click links like:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=never-gonna-give-you-up

Not to be totally facetious, but if they did it'd be much harder to Rick Roll someone.

You could still use the old, ugly URL for such purposes.

whats stopping someone from using a different title?

Do ppl still enjoy a good RickRoll?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XffuAFl18_k - watch out :)

probably the same reason Facebook, Amazon, eBay and tons of other companies don't use prettyfied urls.

Amazon and eBay have systems going back to 1995 to support; they also expose prettified URLs that redirect to Google. They know they have a (slight) problem there, but they do the best they can with what they've got.

As for Facebook, I've always thought they were pretty human-readable.

Thanks for the mention. :-)

Yes, the first thing I thought about twi.bz was, "I thought I already solved this with DecentURL" ... but I didn't quite. Looks like twi.bz is still about shortening URLs, whereas DecentURL is about making URLs decent.

Occassionally DecentURL will shorten a URL, but mainly it's intended to turn crazy random-numbers-and-letters addresses into nicely-named ones, while including the domain to make it somewhat "safe" (like twi.bz does).

Are URL shorteners the new "hello world" app?

(when was the last time a hello world app got $2M in VC funding?)

In the 90's dotcom bubble? :-)

Far too often, unfortunately.

Yes. When I'm dealing with a new language/framework, I usually make a URL shortener. It's simple enough to not take long, yet represents a more useful learning experience than simply 'Hello World'.

I'll give a pony (and my girlfriends logo making skills) to anyone that makes a url shortener from scratch in Arc.

I'd probably advertise yourself as: Twi.bz: the URL shortener that's transparent.

Done. Thanks for the feedback.

Can you add an way to call as an api? Something like:

http://twi.bz/api?url=http://tinyurl.com that returns nothing but the shortened url (or the original if it was shorter)? (Much like tinyurl does here: http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=http://twi.bz)

Then I could use it with TwitterFox!

Small thing, but on the index page:

"Half that length of a Twitter message"

Think you mean 'the' instead of 'that'

Also, when I shorten a URL, it'd be handy to have the new url as a link in addition to a text box, because then I can right click on it and 'Copy Link Location', which is slightly less effort than highlighting and copying. (I know, but I'm uber lazy.)

Nice idea!

Thanks. It was getting really late last night :-)

Working on an API tonight...

"Twi.bz: the transparent URL shrinker" (or shortener, if you're tied to that name) or

"Twi.bz: transparent and short URLs"

Or:

"Twi.bz: Short, Transparent URLs"

Or just direct them to http://twi.bz.twi.bz/a

A problem with using the original domain as a subdomain might be that for people not familiar with your service, these URLs look more like a phishing scam than a shortened URL, quite the opposite of the intended effect ("transparency"): Would you like to go to "http://paypal.twi.bz/c"?

This is a cool idea. The host name in the URL goes a long way.

But there's still some trickery that could be used with redirection, e.g. "I'm Feeling Lucky" Google URLs and the like.

Also most malicious URLs will include the payload in the request parameters. You can still do a lot of damage with a GET request. (Ask Goolge bot if you don't believe me http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/746 )

What I'm trying to say is, there's no substitute for seeing a full URL. Especially for security conscious users like the HN crowd. For the average user though this might be enough information.

How come people aren't looking at this from the other angle: a twitter client could pre-preemptively look up URLs from url shortening services and annotate the tweets with the full URLs?

For that matter, how about a twitter client with a memory? One that keeps dossiers on the people you follow?

How about a twitter client that isn't written in AIR?

PeopleBrowsr does this and is an in-browser JavaScript app. http://www.peoplebrowsr.com/

It seems to me that url transparency is an issue for the clients to solve. Why can't Twitter (or whatever you're using) decode the short url and supply a javascript pop-up or something to tell you where its going?

Agreed. It's not rocket science to follow any short urls and provide the full url in the title attribute.

The newly released Nambu Twitter client does just this. Does the decode inline though. Free too.

What about removing all vowels except the first one? That way it is still shorter but transparent.

I like that you include non .com suffixes but it does add length to the url. However it seems to me that some people may think you're trying to be malicious by using the domain.suffix as some spammers do. I'd suggest you do a replace on the . with a - or some other character.

I'm also keen to get an api or a bookmarklet :)

Yes, a bookmarklet on the main site would be very appreciated

quite a nasty bug if I try and shorten "omgponi.es" it says:

Sorry, twi.bz only understands http and https web addresses

I'd either make http:// be in the text field by default, or append http:// when a user enters a url.

I'll fix that.

Just being picky, but you say on page that

"Instantly you know you'll be taken to Amazon.com and that the link is safe to click on."

but further down, you say:

"twi.bz doesn't warrant that a link is safe"

Otherwise, I'm glad you implemented this idea. It's nifty :)

I tried it on my start-ups domain. The result is interesting :)

"The web address you entered was http://rockingrackets.com/.

This has been converted to http://rockingrackets.twi.bz/a You can copy and paste it from here.

Your original web address had 26 characters, and the converted version has 30 characters."

I can see how this will always happen with the document root of any domain, so maybe you can refuse to shorten those, or make it a kind of in-your-face suggestion that it's silly to shorten a relatively short URL?

And didn't it also say: "Since the original web address is, in this case, shorter than the twi.bz version it's better to use the original. "?

If the original is shorter, just return the original. You can make a note as to why you gave back the original, but I think we can safely assume the user wants the shortest he can get, so give it to him.

But if they add URL click tracking, you still might want the new URL, even if it is longer.

Ehrm... It does now in any case. I didn't see it before blushes (Seriously, how can I miss the only line on a four line page that completely invalidates the point I was trying to make?)

Anyway, that probably was a good demonstration why it should be more in-my-face.

And it also demonstrates why web browsers need to send an im-an-idiot header :(

Your site gives me an error when I try to shorten "www.google.com"

It says that it wants an http:// in front.

You should probably fix that.

I found a bug. If I try to convert this URL:

http://www.areallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreally...

I get

http://.twi.bz/d

which doesn't redirect to the longer URL.

I agree. That is a bug, it's because your domain name is invalid. It should have told you that.

If i'm shortening this URL: amazon.com/permalink and amazon.ca/permalink i will get both times and url with: "amazon.twi.bz"

Wouldn't be better if you allow to put the TLD/ccTLD at first? amazonca.twi.bz/x OR amazoncom.twi.bz/x

We get transparency at the cost of a slightly longer URL. I think it's ok. And will recommend your domain to friends.

Thanks for the work

1. http://amazon.com/permalink converts to http://amazon.twi.bz/f

2. http://amazon.ca/permalink converts to http://amazon.ca.twi.bz/a

Note that for non-.coms the TLD is preserved.

That's a better implementation and idea :-) Congrats

Do you consider releasing the URL mapping database? That would make sense in the context of transparency.

You mean the mapping between twi.bz URLs and the real URLs? Yes, I absolutely plan to release the data. I'm just working on what the best way is, and I wanted to get some feedback.

It's worth knowing that I hacked this together in a two hour session very, very late last night. This is its public debut.

I want to be able to release the mapping and also the trending information.

What format would people prefer?

Great to hear that you also plan to release the trending information. For the URL->twi.bz mapping I would opt for a simple text file with a mapping per line.

Please release a separate file without trend information, as not everyone will need it. For the data format: How about a simple CSV file with 3 fields: "domain-part,path,url". This would translate to such entries:

amazon,a, http://www.amazon.com/Geek-Atlas-Places-Science-Technology/d...

If you compress the file (or start a new file every week/month) this shouldn't be much of a burden for your server.

Always wondered - what value is this database? short of editing the /etc/hosts or browser plugin to redirect from $nowDeadURL/dh36 to $newURL/dh36.

Do people have urls so valuable locked in a tiny url service that'll be lost forever if the service dies? serious question.

Imagine you search for a solution to a very annoying bug in your favorite program. Now imagine you find someone posting on a mailing list with a link to the solution/a patch/something that solves your problem. Imaginary problem solved.

Now imagine the same, except that the link is a tinyurl link and tinyurl went out of business 2 days ago. You will never be able to solve your problem.

If there were some kind of tinyurlarchive.org, you could solve your problem again.

I would suggest moving the "shorten" button to left. It is kind of obscured on the extreme right.

Nice! Great idea. You should look into implementing: http://sites.google.com/a/snaplog.com/wiki/short_url

cheers,

r.S.

Idea. If you return the 'www.' instead of 'http://' at the beginning, you save 3 chars, and I think most of the Twitter clients and Twitter web create a link too.

What happens when you have twi.bz point to tinyurl, and tinyurl point to bit.ly, and bit.ly point back to the original twi.bz link? :P

Can I create a URL shortener infinite loop?

http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainname...

Good job on releasing it so quickly.

    Your original web address had 28 characters, and the converted version has 29 characters.

Congrats. I guess I need to update my rant.

is there any firefox plugin that "unshortens" these urls on hover?

bit.ly's Firefox extension works for a good number of them: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10297

great,thanks!

I was thinking today this exactly!

That is url-encoder istead of shortener. The goal should be in saving space for meaningful text.

I appreciate the hackery and speed with which you implemented this idea born out of HN. That being said, I really, really don't care about another URL shortener.

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