I lke m rlly shrt: Url Redirection

November 28, 2006 10:34 PM

What url redirection / url shrinking services do you use, and why? What features do you wish they had?

I'm thinking of building (yet another) URL redirection service. Except I'd like mine to be better. So, I've got a list of questions:

What service do you use now, if any? Why?
What features do you like, and which just get in the way?
Which features do you wish you had?
What do you thing about ads?
Is URL length important to you?

Any other info about this space is appreciated!

posted by bkudria to computers & internet (21 comments total)

I don't use any of them, because in this day and age it seems the concept of a program that can not handle a long URL is pretty much gone. Seems to me to be more effort to go to some site to shrink a URL than it is to just cut/paste the long one...

'course, I'm just one guy...
posted by twiggy at 10:38 PM on November 28, 2006

I'm another guy.

I freaking hate them with geek passion -- they serve no useful purpose. In fact they do worse than nothing, they reduce usefulness -- the ability to mouse over a link to see where the hell it leads in the browser's statusbar before you click is lost, and as a consequence, I never follow links using tinyurl (or whatever).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:47 PM on November 28, 2006

I use tinyurl.com and to be honest, am not particularly inclined to switch over to another one. It works and is solid.
posted by perpetualstroll at 10:48 PM on November 28, 2006

Unless you need to tell someone a URL over the phone, or write it down on paper, I can't really understand why these things are considered useful at all. I'm with stavros that in general, they only serve to obfuscate (sometimes maliciously) the target URL, and seem to have no added benefits.
posted by knave at 11:11 PM on November 28, 2006

I imagine the number one complaint with TinyURL and its ilk, is the fact that you have no idea what you're clicking on and consequently what kind of horribly nsfw content you're about to be subjected to.

Although it would make the shrunken url a little larger, I think incorporating the original domain name would make clicking less risky.

Another option would be to make the shrunken url go to a page that just straight up gives you a link to the original page. Maybe with a 30 second automatic refresh to the original, so there's enough time to back-out if need be, and so that the technical incompetents won't have a problem.
posted by o0o0o at 11:17 PM on November 28, 2006

I use tinyurl because the name makes the links self-explanatory.
posted by cillit bang at 11:23 PM on November 28, 2006

twiggy: I don't use any of them, because in this day and age it seems the concept of a program that can not handle a long URL is pretty much gone.

While I agree that for the most part, these services offer little. There are plenty of cases where loooong url's simply wrap incorrectly and get broken off. Basically anything that hard wraps at approximately 80 characters, text-based email, old telnet chatlines from the 90's, etc.
posted by o0o0o at 11:26 PM on November 28, 2006

I use Urlcut.com when distributing links over the phone or e-mail (to prevent linebreaks from breaking a link)

Why?

* one letter shorter than tinyurl :-)
* you can choose the alias (ie. urlcut.com/askmefi instead of tinyurl.com/49654qa) - easier when on the phone
* you can password protect your short urls.
* It does the job. I don't need any more features. There are probably lots of other services, maybe even with shorter urls, but my force of habit makes me use this one.

Of course I don't use them on websites myself, that seems pointless to me. (And indeed it's often abused to redirect to all kinds of nastyness).
posted by lodev at 11:41 PM on November 28, 2006

I suppose one feature you might consider would be letting people see the logs for a given url. However, that would probably be useful for the linker, but intrusive for the clicker.
posted by gsteff at 1:18 AM on November 29, 2006

I haven't used it yet, but Get Shorty looks pretty neat.

Like tinyurl and others, it shrinks a URL, but it's hosted on your own domain and you have complete control -- so tinyurl.com/9589fsdsa would become yourdomain.com/AskMe. Handier for the whole where-the-heck-am-i-going aspect, too.

I don't really use these tools myself, but I've noticed that recently the UK Guardian have been using tinyurl in their printed version, which is a great idea considering how precious space is on paper.
posted by robw at 2:56 AM on November 29, 2006

I've noticed that recently the UK Guardian have been using tinyurl in their printed version

I'm sorry for chat here, but whoever made that decision should be stabbed in the eye.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:00 AM on November 29, 2006

No favorites, but I use Tinyurl because it's usually the one that comes to mind first when I'm writing email.

I don't see the point in yet another commercial URL redirection service since there are numerous ones already with user trust and diverse feature sets. There are also numerous copy-and-paste scripts for self-hosted URL shorteners in most popular languages. I wrote my own in PHP and got it about 80% done (the easy bits) before thinking about how little I'd use it, but may finish it as an exercise.

But if there is a missing feature set or quality of service you can bring to the concept, go to town and best of luck.
posted by ardgedee at 3:29 AM on November 29, 2006

Another vote for "hates them with a passion".
posted by dmd at 4:22 AM on November 29, 2006

These days, non-mainstream (read: non-TinyURL) URL redirectors are primarily useful to spammers to get around filters. This might not be a space you want to innovate in.
posted by mendel at 4:32 AM on November 29, 2006

Ok, I guess I'll reveal my super secret planned features. Comments appreciated:

I plan to use subdomains, with a choosable or randomly generated keyword. So something like 'askmefi.domain.com'.

I also planned to add statistics, that would show volume of clicks, but not source IP or anything like that.

I planned to have a preview feature, like tinyurl, yes, that would show you the link, and then redirect in 10 seconds or something.

Then, we also have password protection, iframes (to allow the short url to stay in the address bar), and some other minor things.

Thoughts? Thanks for the feedback so far!
posted by bkudria at 4:50 AM on November 29, 2006

Super secret planned features:

What advantages do subdomains bring? (why is http://newurl.example.com/ better than http://example.com/newurl ?) In Firefox and Safari this can make URL recall from the address bar harder, not easier.

Passwording would be nice, even though it's a feature I would rarely want to use. Frames, inline or otherwise, are an irritation and will cause unintended consequences on the many websites which react badly to being framed. I would consider whether keeping the short URL persistentently in view is necessary to the user or not: a formal passthrough process (click link -> enter password -> see result) is plenty of warning that the user had passed through a redirector. And if you're doing it to retain branding or display advertising above the target page, you're exactly the reason why many websites will throw an error or target a new window when they're loaded into a frame.
posted by ardgedee at 5:06 AM on November 29, 2006

Is URL length important to you?
I think it matters more on your target audience. An older person will likely care more about a long url, because they are more prone to think Yahoo! Search is 'the internet' and type in the whole thing there, and then search for it and click. (You would be AMAZED how common this is, I am not making this up.)

If your target is teens to thirties - they know how to bookmark, might use auto-complete on urls, will likely be clicking a link to access your site, not typing the name, etc. I think it honestly doesn't matter for most people, but if you're aiming for a computer-illiterate audience...it might make a difference.
posted by jesirose at 5:59 AM on November 29, 2006

I use tinyURL all the time - mostly because I have the "TinyUrl button" on my link bar (just drag that link to your links bar and click the button whenever you want to make a tinyURL)

I find it particularly handy when I want to give someone a link to directions from googlemaps or something and don't want some crazy-huge link in the middle of my email.
posted by soplerfo at 6:50 AM on November 29, 2006

ardgedee: I think subdomains look nicer. I do realize that a lot people use completion and I don't want to make it hard for them. But, typing in 'mydomain' into the address bar could potentially show all URLs visited through this service - not very useful if it become popular. :)

So, I'll offer subdomains by default, but someone could choose to do a path only instead. Subdomains would also give the user a chance to add some custom paths on the end.

No one likes frames, agreed. I'm merely offering it as an option. The opportunity to add an ad is useful, however. I would also offer to display a short message in the top bar.

My other plan was to update a section on the homepage with links and URLs, and any associated messages, and display an ad there.

jesirose: Part of my target is those computer-illiterate people, which is why I'm not doing randomly generated URLs (OTOH, strange domains scare these people, and a short .com is really hard to get). However, I think web-savvy users will be interested too, especially for the use soplerflo mentions.
posted by bkudria at 7:09 AM on November 29, 2006

I don't have a problem with subdomains, but if you have a good reason for the extra work, go to it.

Framing is a trickier issue. I don't like it sites redirect/block when framed -- it makes Google Images less useful than it could be -- and I find it childish. But since they do it, you are going to be in a position to either protect your users from the behavior or deal with the consequencess of it.

Best of luck and link to Projects when it's up.
posted by ardgedee at 8:10 AM on November 29, 2006

Note that even with TinyURL and similar services, there's nothing keeping users from appending a comment (e.g. #Metafilter) that indicates where the link goes if they want to. People are just lazy.
posted by kindall at 8:50 AM on November 29, 2006