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Google URL shortener available to the public

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Re: Google URL shortener available to the public

#121

Post by pornel »

shabda wrote: post #115
jpablo wrote: post #9

Why do we need url shorteners again ? When I see a shortened URL the probabilities of me clicking the link go down to almost zero.

1. Twitter. (Obviously) 2. Print magazine. (There was no possibly way to link to pages with long urls in print, now its bit.ly/fgyr ) 3. Billboards (Eg. Find us on twittter, facebook, blah on witter with bit.ly/grwt )

In magazines and on billboards I see links ${company_name}.com/${campaign_name}, which I think makes more sense — it's more memorable than random shortlink characters.

Re: Google URL shortener available to the public

#122

Post by eru »

mfukar wrote: post #110
blantonl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do need them. While twitter pretty much spawned the whole ecosystem, there still is a very important and functional use for URL shorteners. The biggest, outside of twitter, has to be the method of emailing enormous html links to someone. With so many email clients out there, it is a crap shoot to send a link. Personally and professionally bit.ly has really helped out in those cases. With that in mind, I wonder wha…

The biggest, outside of twitter, has to be the method of emailing enormous html links to someone. Last I tried, I could send an email formatted in HTML, where: See this didn't take that much space, and could be read by any half-decent email client. Even alpine can do it.

Yes. I guess communicating URL orally or on paper (where people have to type them in to use them, or you may even have to write them by hand) is the only real use case for URL shorteners.

Re: Google URL shortener available to the public

#123

Post by Semiapies »

fletchowns wrote: post #50
jberryman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i agree with you, but how many of those unshortened links do you think will exist 10 years from now? i think the web is like a brain in which memory is active, not static. it`s just a bit too young for that to be obvious.

I don't know about the rest of you but there are plenty of links in my bookmarks that are probably more than 10 years old that are still active.

And many, many, many more links you've clicked on in the last ten years that lead to 404s right now.

Re: Google URL shortener available to the public

#124

Post by simonsarris »

brown9-2 wrote: post #96
walkon wrote: post #61

Is it just me, or was I able to "shorten" an already goo.gl shortened url? http://goo.gl/fBUb --> http://goo.gl/Bkmv --> http://news.ycombinator.com They don't want to allow this, do they?

I had no problem creating links about five layers deep: http://goo.gl/87bM --> http://goo.gl/4P9R http://goo.gl/4P9R --> http://goo.gl/7W5A http://goo.gl/7W5A --> http://goo.gl/Wcsa http://goo.gl/Wcsa --> http://goo.gl/qzcb http://goo.gl/qzcb --> http://goo.gl/

Amusingly, I clicked the first link which took me to goo.gl, and closed the window to see every one of your links turn 'visited', giving me instant confirmation that I did indeed visit each (in spite of there being nothing in the back-history)

Re: Google URL shortener available to the public

#125

Post by ralph »

jemfinch wrote: post #100
Hixie wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That convention drives me batty. So much time wasted when trying to copy-and-paste those URLs.

That "convention" is one of the only standards-compliant ways to delimit URLs. Fix your copy-and-paste mechanism.

What standard says " rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/>? The appendix of http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt says " rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/>.

Re: Google URL shortener available to the public

#126

Post by jemfinch »

ralph wrote: post #125
jemfinch wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "convention" is one of the only standards-compliant ways to delimit URLs. Fix your copy-and-paste mechanism.

What standard says " rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/> ? The appendix of http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt says " rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/> .

Read closer.

"The characters '' are unsafe because they are used as the delimiters around URLs in free text".

The RFC itself uses "" because it already uses "" for BNF non-terminals, which are much more common than URLs in the RFC.

Enjoy your undeserved upvote :)

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