" Maybe because the problem is arising people will move to short urls on their own sites so that they don't even need to be shortened for twitter and such, because honestly the problem isn't that the urls are redirecting its that the urls need to be redirected because of an unnecessary long url for clarity."

And this is the part I never quite understood. Does anyone really type in the URLs? Folks click, or at best copy and paste. Did anyone here for once typed in that http://tinyurl.com/yadayada stuff?

What exact problem URL shortener addresses, aside from (maybe) miniscule adjustment of aesthetics?