Shorturl RFC

[Lincoln]

An RFC for <a href="http://sites.google.com/a/snaplog.com/wiki/short_url">defining short URLs</a> for web pages is making its rounds and I like what I see.

View Ticker (http://icrontic.com/ticker/shorturl-rfc)

[Snarkasm]

If I'm reading this correctly, they're proposing we write a Tweet or whatever, and when we post it, it goes and searches out the short URL. How is this useful for Twitter? The point of shortening a URL isn't for the viewer's benefit, it's for the sender's benefit, so they retain valuable characters for typing. What if my link's already over 140 characters?

Even if Twitter or other similar services ignore the character count until they check if the link has a shortened version, it'll break accurate character counds... until they check if the link has a shortened version. That makes planning a post by character restrictions useless until it's fetched and returned it.

Am I reading that correctly?

[Lincoln]

The proposal doesn't require Twitter's involvement. Say I'm publishing an article and this is the URL:

http://icrontic.com/articles/ocz-behemoth-mouse-review

Now I create a short version:

http://icrontic.com/a/s93 (dummy link)

Or, maybe I use tinyurl, or bit.ly, or whatever.

In the HTML of the article, I would set a link property pointing at the shortened version. That tells Google and shortening services that I've already established a shortened URL for this item and we don't need 10 more. So, URL shorteners can check to see if a shortened version already exists and, if so, simply return that URL instead. That prevents the issue of having 10 services each with a different link to the same content.

The idea isn't that anyone HAS to implement it, but that people would naturally migrate to services that featured this functionality.

[Snarkasm]

Oh, so bit.ly itself would look for a shortened version and use that instead of its own? That makes more sense, and could be useful.

Wonder if they'll account for situations where a site's chosen "short" URL isn't really so short, and could be made not-insignificantly-shorter through an old shortener method.

[Buddy J]

I like the idea very much.

[Lincoln]

Wonder if they'll account for situations where a site's chosen "short" URL isn't really so short, and could be made not-insignificantly-shorter through an old shortener method.Well, it puts it in the hands of the content creator, so you'd have to take it up with them :) In any case, nothing would be stopping you from re-shortening via another service. I wouldn't hold your breath for tinyurl and bit.ly to adopt it; more likely you'd see new services.