Thoughts on TinyURL Services

Nice article on Joshua's blog on url shorteners.

The worst problem is that shortening services add another layer of indirection to an already creaky system. A regular hyperlink implicates a browser, its DNS resolver, the publisher's DNS server, and the publisher's website. With a shortening service, you're adding something that acts like a third DNS resolver, except one that is assembled out of unvetted PHP and MySQL...

I have to concur. I feel this way about the Digg service, which not only does the above, but also keeps you "on" the digg page with their toolbar of "services". Kinda like framing someone else's page ("deep linking"?) with your own ad banners. Of course in this case it's not ads, but digg-ing tools. Still, it's a logical next step (and I'm sure some tinyurl services do just this. Personally I want my tinyurl services to just give me a bookmark to the page I really want to go to, nothing more.

Joshua goes through a bunch of other issues that exists, both for the user and the publisher of the page that you're going to. Well worth a read.

Posted by Arcterex at April 03, 2009 03:16 PM