They're running quite a marketing campaign for the launch, anyone think it will rival .com's popularity?
For legitimate uses, it's terrible. Imagine having to say "that's co NOT com... see-oh. no M!" every time you give out your domain.
You can get them at under a $1 per domain too if you bulk order them. But since it's a pre-order, the people who pay $300 get priority.
I don't understand why they don't auction off the obviously desirable domains, like they're doing with the 1 letter domains.
After reading their website though, I got the impression cointernet.co guys are trying too hard to convince how much of a hit .co will be.
Also, isn't there a plan in the works to make everything and a kitchen sink as their own .tld?
Twitter was given T.CO at no cost as part of the .Co Founders Program. For more info and details on CoInternet the T.CO shortener and the E.CO live auction, I have covered the story here:
http://www.dotsauce.com/2010/06/09/twitter-t-co-domain-offic...
Morons.
There's no better user experience to a shortened url, it's like having unprotected sex with a random in a nightclub, you've no idea what you could end up with.
Repeat after me, shortened urls break the web and are inherently evil.
At most, they need to shorten the links only for SMS; they don't need to shorten them for the API or for the website (as they've just demonstrated).
So this is Twitter's Digg bar: they want to wrap and trace every link that goes in a Tweet? So much for all those custom bit.ly domains. So much for bit.ly.
These guys are going crass quick. @alex's decision to quit is less and less surprising.
And this is great news, as far as I'm concerned. Generic shortened URLs are becoming a plague upon the web and are marginally useful at best outside of Twitter. Even more props to Twitter for demystifying links where applicable instead of taking the easier route of pure obscurity. The sooner third-party shorteners disappear from Twitter the sooner they can disappear from the rest of the web and we can have link transparency back again.
On a related note, I'm actually quite happy that Twitter is starting to close up their platform. People can stop pretending it's some open platform for global communication and finally realize it's a novel service thanks to its popularity, but little more.
Marginally useful at best outside of Twitter? Care to explain? Less than 1% of bitly's traffic is coming from twtitter, so obviously there are other people that find value in trackable URLs... I'm curious why you think it isn't useful?
All they are doing is wrapping the URL, not actually changing anything. All services that have their own URL's will be 100% fine.
Their API will return the original links too with markers, so client code can be updated to display the original URLs. Twitter wants developers to display the original URLs and link to the t.co URLs.
Their rational behind this is flawed. One of the reason they are giving for implementing this is to be able to shut down links if they turn out to be malicious, possibly as a bait and switch. But since the right way to do a shortener is to do a 301 and that's what they say they are doing, they wouldn't have that ability.
So, not a Digg-bar. Its what many users want-they put a long ugly link in, and then it gets shorter.
Not the end of bit.ly. Why? Publishers want these numbers, not to give them to twitter.
Damn. Looks like URL shorteners are here to stay, permanently, and twitter is crowding out all existing link shorteners.
While they'll "wrap" other shortening services, what's the point now? People won't use them and they'll fall by the wayside. Not really a bad thing in my opinion (people use them now when they don't even need to) but still a bit of a smack in the face to services that essentially helped Twitter in their early days.
Before - This is a great news site: http://bit.ly/2Mp91y
After - This is a great news site: news.ycombinator.com
A loss for URL shortener services, but a win for users.
HEAD /2Mp91y HTTP/1.1
Host: bit.ly
...
Status: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved
Location: http://news.ycombinator.com/
Twitter could indeed have done it on their side, but just doing it themselves is more efficient for them and provides a bit of extra user benefit - the fact it's automatic so you get more room for text in your tweets, their malicious link protection, and reliability if you assume Twitter is more reliable than J Random URL Shortener.
the source: http://github.com/sharkbrainguy/deshorten an example: http://bit.ly/amxL0Y
I really hope this habit doesn't catch on. If it does each link will have three points of failure instead of one (as it should) or two (as it will with t.co).
HN: http://to./4dw2
Note that the 'dot' (in to.) is necessary to make the hostname absolute, so it doesn't fail in pretty much every browser. Otherwise, the URL should just be: http://to/
http://twitter.com/twitterapi/status/15739646901 and http://twitter.com/twitterapi/status/15739827266
I would vote this up were it not for "Bla Blubb". I have no idea what that is supposed to say.
> "All links included in Direct Message notification emails currently pass through our link service and are converted to a http://t.co link. We've also begun testing this service for links in Tweets"
I'm curious whether they're going to outright put a blanket ban on "alternative" URL shorteners like they did with Twitter-based Ad services.
If you are already partial to a particular shortener when you tweet, you can continue to use it for link shortening and analytics as you normally would, and we'll wrap the shortened links you submit.
http://blog.twitter.com/2010/06/links-and-twitter-length-sho...
.CO founders are hand-picked to ensure the domain will "contribute to the .CO community in a meaningful way." In return, they get get first dibs on a .CO domain name, which will be publicly launched in July 2010. (http://www.cointernet.co/domain/become-co-founder)
Maybe it is registered under the program's name instead of the actual registrant to ensure registrants under the program stick with their originally-submitted plan. Or at least they can't turn around and change it to a domain parked ad page.
Or perhaps the whois registrant name will be changed after the public launch.
FWIW, Here are my messages to the Twitter developer list about it:
http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/msg/...
http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/msg/...
I think it is disgusting how Twitter has appropriated the old post-9/11 "we're spying on you for for own safety" stance that governments have been terrorizing citizens with. Basically, their spyware is protecting you from...other spyware. All for a fraction of a fraction of a penny per click.
Also note that their t.co shortener will create links that are 19 characters long. But, j.mp links are only 18 characters long, which means t.co links won't even be as short as possible. So, it's worse all around.
- There's an implicit trust that must be made before expecting a user to click on any shortened URL. Since you can't follow it through to the content without actually clicking on it, there's no way of knowing whether you're headed to a clever browser hijack (or worse)!
- Which brings us to the work-safe barrier that most everyone who works a real job has. Websense, in most cases, blocks anything that's streaming media, TV, porn, advertisements, gambling, etc. etc. etc. And then it logs it, and it logs which user accesses it. When I'm at work, I'm pretty judicious-- I don't want to be recorded as clicking on YouTube links, or listening to Kanye West's latest gaffe, let alone going to Facebook or Myspace. URL shortners completely obfuscate where the link is taking you-- so the damage is done without you even knowing what choice you make. Therefore, unless I'm absolutely certain it came from someone I know, and it's specified what it is, I'm not clicking that shit. Which brings us back to implicit trust.
Most people don't check the links first, or even do this 'trust check' before they click on links. How long until we see, "Woman fired for watching Jack Johnson video on company time?" (accidentally, of course). It shouldn't be that way, but it will be before too long.