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0 pointsaditya16y ago0 comments

Generic shortened URLs are becoming a plague upon the web and are marginally useful at best outside of Twitter

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?

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5 comments · 2 top-level

india16y ago· 3 in thread

URL shortners break the web in many ways.

Link rot, link hijack, it takes longer to reach the page, additional point of failure and domain based algorithms break. In other words, plague.

jamesbritt16y ago

Well, OK.

But being able to pop in a nice terse URL where a long one would break in some E-mail client is handy.

jules16y ago

Join us in the 21st century and use HTML emails. You can use any text on a link, amazing huh?

viraptor16y ago

You can put in both. Full one, so that you don't look like a scammer and the short one in case the first one is broken by the client.

kristiandupont16y ago

Yes, they are popular among people who send links, but annoying to people who click on them. I hate clicking on a link that I can't see the domain of.

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