Joshua Schachter has some observations on the downside of url shortners we al use for twitter, linke TinyUrl.com. ________________________________________________
2009 Orlando Fringe: Our Guide | Write reviews | Read reviews | Patron Choice Awards
"But the biggest burden falls on the clicker, the person who follows the links. The extra layer of indirection slows down browsing with additional DNS lookups and server hits. A new and potentially unreliable middleman now sits between the link and its destination. And the long-term archivability of the hyperlink now depends on the health of a third party. The shortener may decide a link is a Terms Of Service violation and delete it. If the shortener accidentally erases a database, forgets to renew its domain, or just disappears, the link will break. If a top-level domain changes its policy on commercial use, the link will break. If the shortener gets hacked, every link becomes a potential phishing attack.
There are usability issues as well. The clicker can't even tell by hovering where a link will take them, which is bad form. Some sites offer link previews, but there's no way to make a preview preference stick globally across the many shortening services. And just like ad networks, link shortening services could track a user's behavior across many domains. That makes the paranoid among us uncomfortable. We hope the shortener never decides to add interstitials or otherwise "monetize" the link with ads, but we have no guarantee."
2009 Orlando Fringe: Our Guide | Write reviews | Read reviews | Patron Choice Awards