I read an article (link via Digg) that informed me the URL shortening service TinyURL had gone down for several hours leaving many links broken. Although I used TinyURL briefly when it first came out I have grown to despise the whole idea of shortening URLs like that. I hate not knowing what kind of link I am clicking. Is it legit? Or is it goatse? You never know until it is too late. That is why I was very happy to find that someone had written a script to “embiggen” these TinyURLs (link).
However the article raised an interesting point I had not thought of: Every single link is controlled by TinyURL. What if the owner decides to redirect everyone to an advertisement first before taking them to the real link? What if, as apparently happened, the service is unavailable? Part of the blame is on clunky CMS packages that force bizarre, meaningless, and ridiculously long URLs upon us. But the other part goes to the publishers themselves. Why are they displaying giant links on their site anyway? A simple text description or even the word “link” is sufficient. If you want to see the URL it is visible in the browser’s status bar when you mouse over it anyway. And if you want to copy the link just right-click and choose “Copy link location”. I really don’t understand the need for services like TinyURL. Anyone?
