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Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

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wraith808:
One of the reasons that bit.ly is in such widespread use is-wraith808 (April 19, 2010, 10:13 AM)
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People are lazy, and deluded into thinking security is the other guys problem. Regardless of how chronically incredibly dangerous this practice is ~OMG~ it's Fun! - Because the whole point of the internet is FaceBook, marketing & vanity...

Yes, I'm a bit cranky today.  :)
-Stoic Joker (April 19, 2010, 10:40 AM)
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:huh:

Ever consider the limitation of twitter and what it does to URLs.  Isn't this 'twitter' craze partly to blame for that?  Or are they absolved because it has to be the lazy, deluded people's fault?

There's all sorts of dangers on the internet... shortening URLs I don't think falls too soundly in that category.  It's in the implementation (as ScanCode just pointed out above) not the practice.

Eóin:
It would be interesting to see a survey of tweets with shortened URLs. I bet the vast majority would still fit within the 160 chars limit even with the long URL.

Of course I have no data to back that up, it's just a feeling ;)

wraith808:
It would be interesting to see a survey of tweets with shortened URLs. I bet the vast majority would still fit within the 160 chars limit even with the long URL.

Of course I have no data to back that up, it's just a feeling ;)
-Eóin (April 19, 2010, 11:36 AM)
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Of course, people don't just tweet the URL... or why do it using twitter?   As micro-blogging implies, it's commentary on the URL that adds value.  Fitting said commentary + the URL (and sometimes even the shortened URL) is at times a challenge.

frex - what I would consider a miniminalist tweet about this conversation -

An interesting discussion on URL shorteners on DonationCoder - Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation - https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=22478

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Clocks in at over 160 by 22 characters.

Lashiec:
An interesting discussion on URL shorteners on DonationCoder - Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation - https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=22478

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Clocks in at over 160 by 22 characters.
-wraith808 (April 19, 2010, 01:16 PM)
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2 characters, actually. Didn't see the ellipsis.

An interesting discussion on URL shorteners on DonationCoder: Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

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And, hey, look, a mere 98 characters line (170 internally, including BBcode and HTTP link).

I wonder if all this paranoia comes because of the hack done to the Apache issue-tracking server (which used TinyURL to deliver the XSS attack that started everything), because last week a friend sent me a bit.ly URL that redirected to at least one other URL shortener before showing me the true URL, and worked perfectly, without any warning message. Considering how distasteful the content hosted at the site URL was, I wish it worked back then, it would have saved me one more terrible picture ingrained in my brain >_<

wraith808:
An interesting discussion on URL shorteners on DonationCoder: Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

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And, hey, look, a mere 98 characters line (170 internally, including BBcode and HTTP link).

-Lashiec (April 19, 2010, 02:15 PM)
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Ummm... that's not twitterable, which is what my point was.  The arbitrary limit set by twitter at 160 characters is what made these url shorteners gain traction.  They were around before, but no where near as ubiquitous as they seem to have become since twitter.  I'm not advocating their use anywhere else in particular.  I personally never used them until I started using twitter, and it became easier to use the same URL in all mediums rather than switch up for one contact method.

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