VapURL is like a URL shortening service, except that the URLs expire, both in time and in number of visits. Come up with your own creative uses.
We'd really like to get some feedback and critique on our little hobby project.
What if, for example, you had a contest, and the winners got one URL and the losers got another? From a marketing standpoint, I could see lots of people digging that. Hell, I would use that.
Or what if more security uses were put into place?
To me, the uses for something like this could be endless. Beats just giving up like tr.im did.
I'm not sure that most users will think it's neat, though. It's not like shortened urls hanging around is a security risk to them. At least, I can't think of a downside. Scarcity is scary, though, and fear leads to alternate behavior. What I mean is that a user might think--I don't want this to expire! What if my friends come back in two weeks and can't click the link I send them?
I guess creative uses could be releasing a url for a limited number of beta testers, or a limited offer. In both cases, however, you want website smarts, too. In the first example, you want the website to also be checking the number of beta testers who sign up in case the real url gets leaked. In the second, you still want to have a landing page that moves visitors to the new offer or something.
I'd love to learn better uses for this. My first reaction was "not another shortener", but I feel empathetic to your idea now, even if I'm still lagging on coming up with creative, practical uses.
Say, for a user-contributed coupon/deal site, I want to give users an incentive to post, so I'll let them put in a shortened url redirect to their affiliate links in the post, but after x numbers of clicks or a set amount of time, I want to switch the redirect to my own affiliate link.
@mahmud: I agree that it shouldn't be used for business logic or security.
@quizbiz: I think you're looking for some sort of proxy. Maybe more like Tor.
I was thinking of using it as a private URL that I could send to my a friend. They'd be able to see what I was sending them, but nobody else could. If someone intercepted the message, at least my friend would know about it.
I would charge for more specific and secure uses. Sensitive private data protected by a good terms of service/privacy policy and no questions asked.