there are other good features to some url shorteners beyond just getting your link to fit inside a tweet.
the features like metrics and click tracking behind a lot of these better offerings are quite nice and are useful way beyond status messages.
the features like metrics and click tracking behind a lot of these better offerings are quite nice and are useful way beyond status messages.
It's so short term focused it makes me want to puke my guts out. People with no vision create products for people with no vision and then people with vision get harmed by it. The future of the internet is getting harmed by it.
URL Shorteners should be outlawed for the sake of humanity.
Short urls = short focus, while the Internet = vision
I don't think I'm being overly dramatic here. Shortened urls reduce future generations' ability to find information. Information and access to it will simply Vaporize!
i'm curious to know why you think that shortened urls will reduce future generations' ability to find information. especially since, for the most part, their usage is restricted to the social web.
It's a bit hyperbolic but that's the basic problem, I think.
that is an issue with the internet at large, not just with url shorteners. in addition, the only externally meaningful thing that would be lost is the bitly connection on twitter that connects that tweet to the content. whatever brilliance he linked to would still exist outside that scope and be accessible. unless his bitly link was to bitly itself.
Are all the URLs in your tweets going to be broken in 2 years? More likely than a Wikipedia or Google URL.
i suppose the root of my problem with this line of thought is that it basically is saying that if you want to start a value-added service, go big or go home. no room for little guys, because if you fail you might somehow be destroying some of the fabric of the web.
i find this disagreeable. seems not very hacker-like.