Live data from Hacker News

Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

cranialsoup.blogspot.com

31–40 of 118 posts

Re: Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

#31
post #3

What Twitter needs is to remove the 140 character limitation. Nobody uses SMS anymore, especially when the content contains URLs to non-mobile-friendly sites.

Tons and tons of people still use twitter via SMS. @EV talked about this during his (otherwise boring) SXSW talk. I don't see them ditching that anytime soon.

Right, but those people aren't sending URLs to each other.

Re: Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would happen when those messages are delivered to a user's phone via SMS? There's still a nontrival amount of users having status updates/direct messages delivered to their mobile phones that probably wouldn't appreciate a message with a 50+ character URL (or the URL being stripped, effecting message integrity).

They could apply URL shortening to a tweet when delivering over SMS, if necessary.

Or they could apply URL canonicalization to tweets delivered any other way: follow all the 302s until they get the actual page, then replace with those URLs instead. (Actually, the best approach would be to canonicalize the URL on its way in, and then shorten with a single, known URL shortener on the way out, if sending via SMS. This would stop the "shortener wars" in its tracks, which is probably a good thing, because each shortener that dies leaves dangling links in its wake.)

Re: Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

#33
post #19
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that would completely go against the concept of Twitter: short-form communication.

Is "the concept of Twitter" what people are getting value from? If not, forget "the concept". (In my circles, people seem to be getting value from "an opt-in audience of likeminded people who you may extract business value from someday which does not include your girlfriend, high school buddy, mother, or Farmville." People definitely are not using Twitter primarily for short-form communication: if they were, two twee…

> People definitely are not using Twitter primarily for short-form communication: if they were, two tweets out of every three wouldn't include a link to long-form communication.)

That's not quite true; people read the short text to figure out whether they want to click the link. Even if long-form communications were allowed, there would still need to be a "title" field, for people to determine if they want to read the whole thing—which would basically be what is currently the tweet itself.

Re: Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

#34
post #9

While the author has a right to be upset, her attitude toward the support staff — who likely have no control over the situation — is disgusting. ("Your apology is worthless", "Your refusal to check the link", etc. from the email conversation, and the ensuing comments on the blog post.)

Seriously. I've found it's easier to make someone do something when you don't have your teeth clenched at first, looking to attack. If she approached that with a "Could you help me figure out..." or "I think you should probably fix..." attitude, instead of a "screw you" one, she probably would have received a similarly gracious response.

Did you read the email exchange she posted? Her original email was polite, her first response was a little clipped but not yet angry, and it wasn't until bit.ly had blown her off twice that she started with the attacky language.

Re: Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

#35
So their spam detection system isn't as good as at should be. Give them a break. People spreading malware use url shorteners all the time, and I'd bet some automated system just got tripped up here.

(malice -> incompetence etc.)

I'm happy bitly is at least working on spam.

Re: Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

#36
Firstly, the hypocrisy of a URL shortener blocking another URL shortener's links because they can't be verified is hilarious. Secondly, if a person goes as far as to shorten every link they copy from their browser and use a Twitter client that shortens all links regardless of length, I hardly think they have much room to complain about the system they're fully backing.

What did she expect to happen? That Bitly would concern themselves with her reputation? If you want a URL shortener who cares, your only option is to run your own. Bitly's only concern is for their business, nothing more.

Post reply on HN