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Facebook jumps into the short URL space with fb.me

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20 pointsseldo15 comments

"short URL space"? There's a 'space' for these now? Next it'll be called a business sector or something.

I think it turns into a space once one of you gets funded: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/look_out_tinyurl_bitly_...

There a good dozen or so companies all doing the same thing; how many more do you need before you call it a "space"?

There's a good number of beginner programmers that write HelloWorld applications. But it doesn't really make it a 'space'.

I would use a URL shortener that included some description of the destination site. Perhaps just the domain name minus the top level. So something like:

xx.yy/nytimes-unique identifier

The shortness of the URL doesn't really matter all that much does it? From what I can tell they are used mostly for stat tracking. People are still mostly clicking or copy/pasting them. 5-8 more characters isn't going to hurt.

Yet another one? Quoting mcav "Just when I thought the URL shortener fad was on the way out..." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=995050

Augh. Yet another! When will the madness end?

Does anyone understand why?

Today's URL shorteners are yesterday's redirect links. Used to be that we hated redirects and avoided them if we could; now Twitter has suddenly made them cool. If you get people to use your redirects/shortener you gain access to all those delicious traffic analytics on where the eyeballs are going today. Hence the land grab by google and fb in what used to be bitly's private domain.

> land grab by google

If anyone else was confused by this, I believe it is in reference to http://goo.gl

I had not heard of that project until just now. It's nice to see they're giving it some thought rather than just slapping something together, but I'd love to see "longevity" added to the project goals.

They might join something like http://301works.org, which aims to archive short URLs even after the company goes away.

Although I'm not sure why people are so terrified of short links breaking; long URLs are constantly disappearing.

Long URLs constantly disappear, but only one root at a time. If Wikipedia disappeared tomorrow, all the Wikipedia links would break, but URL shorteners consolidate roots. If bit.ly disappeared tomorrow, it's not just one site that is affected. Furthermore, the use of a redirect breaks traditional mirroring systems. You can't just prepend somemirror.com to the path and expect it to work.

cheap brand reinforcement. I'm sure someone will pay the Turkish domain registry enough to overcome their aversion to creating a high-level domain such as twi.tr before long: http://www.101domain.com/tr.htm

Edit: I see some enterprising soul in Italy saw the possibilities back in 2005: http://whois.domaintools.com/fuck.it

Your Twitter one is too long :) I think it should be tw.tr

Damn - a 16% efficiency gain! You're hired!

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