Let's not be silly, of course you can come up with an example greater than the 160 limit, that's hardly the point.

Well I'm not really looking to say URL shortening has no use, just that in cases where they aren't needed then they shouldn't be used due to the negative aspects that come along for the ride.

Oops yes, I was thinking of SMS text messages.

It exactly because of the 160 character SMS limit. Originally tweets were sent to and from phones through the SMS networks.

I actually think this is still possible?

I presume the extra 20 chars was reserved for potential ads, they are a commercial entity after all.

If Twitter was smart they'd implement their own URL shortening service that did two things:

1. If viewed in the browser, it would abbreviate the URL (or not, depending on each user's settings) much like DonationCoder's forums do automatically with long URLs.

2. If sent via text message/SMS to an actual phone, it would send the shortened URL (if the full URL is longer than the shortened one, of course).

They are going to implement their own

Rather than fix the problem in a way that makes sense, bit.ly has gone ahead and changed the wording of their page.

The top banner now says "Stop - there might be a problem with the requested link" rather than "WARNING - visiting this website may harm your computer"

It now identifies reshortened links as such, but goes on to state

    * Some URL-shorteners re-use their links, so bit.ly can't guarantee the validity of this link.
    * Some URL-shorteners allow their links to be edited, so bit.ly can't tell where this link will lead you.
    * Spam and malware is very often propagated by exploiting these loopholes, neither of which bit.ly allows for.

The link you requested may contain inappropriate content, or even spam or malicious code that could be downloaded to your computer without your consent, or may be a forgery or imitation of another website, designed to trick users into sharing personal or financial information.

Better than it was, but still not acceptable, as far as I am concerned. If they can detect that a URL comes from a shortener at the time someone clicks, they can do it at the time it is shortened and just not allow it.

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