The problems with url shorteners

Re:The problems with url shorteners by wheels on Friday April 03, 2009 @05:30PM (#545649)

I almost always use tinyurl for that reason since I can enter a descriptive name.

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Re:The problems with url shorteners by Semiapies on Friday April 03, 2009 @06:17PM (#545751)

The descriptive ones are nice. http://tinyurl.com/Do-Tiny-URLs-Suck gives a little more information than http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=545565

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Re:The problems with url shorteners by zck on Friday April 03, 2009 @06:42PM (#545784)

Well, it's different information. It is nice to know what it's about, but I'd rather read a random news.ycombinator link than a random article titled "Do Tiny URLs Suck".

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Re:The problems with url shorteners by Semiapies on Monday April 06, 2009 @06:15PM (#549777)

I wouldn't. I like HN, but any random link could be one of a thousand topics I don't care about.

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Re:The problems with url shorteners by bradgessler on Friday April 03, 2009 @11:36PM (#546021)

I wrote shorty (http://github.com/bradgessler/shorty/tree/master), installed it on heroku.com, and hooked my own URL up to it so I could enter concise, descriptive shortened URLs. Its not for Joe Shmoe but if you're a geek, check it out.

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Re:The problems with url shorteners by pclark on Friday April 03, 2009 @06:48PM (#545791)

descriptive doesn't help with malicious intent

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Re:The problems with url shorteners by branden on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:44PM (#545894)

Really, it makes that problem worse. I've had it burned into my brain what a shortened URL looks like - short domain, short hash - so I can immediately recognize one and be suspicious of it. But looking at http://tinyurl.com/Do-Tiny-URLs-Suck, I may just click without realizing what it actually is.

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