Gilby on slashdot

[john_childs]

Gilby's TinyURL project is getting debated on Slashdot.

Do Tiny URL Services Weaken Net Architecture?

"Thanks to twitter, SMS, and mobile web, a lot of people are using the url minimizers like tinyurl.com, urltea.com. However, now I see a lot of people using it on their regular webpages. This could be a big problem if billions of different links are unreachable at a given time. What if a service starts sending a pop-up ad along with the redirect. What if the masked target links to a page with an exploit instead of linking to the new photos of Jessica Alba. Are services like tinyurl, urltea etc. taking the WWW towards a single point of failure? Is it a huge step backward? Or I'm just crying wolf here?"

What if... What if... What if the web unraveled?

[Gilby]

And the competitor mentioned there comes up with this when going to their page:

Service Temporarily Unavailable The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

I can only wish that my site was the single point everyone goes through, but that's just unrealistic.

[habbywall]

I think these services aren't bringing the web down as much as pr0n and other crap like it though.

[Borgschulze]

Originally Posted by habbywall

I think these services aren't bringing the web down as much as pr0n and other crap like it though.

Um, Porn makes the internet. It makes up the largest portion of any kind of website on the internet.

[unisteve]

Originally Posted by Borgschulze

Um, Porn makes the internet. It makes up the largest portion of any kind of website on the internet.

Even though I don't find it particularly difficult to find porography online, I have trouble believing that statement, Borgschulze. I'm sure you're quoting a statistic you read somewhere, and I'm not trying to undermine your personal credibility.

I still think most people actually use the internet for communication and looking for information, not just porn.

EDIT: Then again, I might be a little optimistic.

[uni57]

single point of failure

Like when unicyclist.com is down and unicyclists all over the world stare blankly at the screen and wonder, "what do I do now???"

[UniDudeDX]

woooooooooooooo that would suck.

[CoreTechs]

Originally Posted by uni57

Like when unicyclist.com is down and unicyclists all over the world stare blankly at the screen and wonder, "what do I do now???"

Go unicycling...?

[James_Potter]

Originally Posted by unisteve

Even though I don't find it particularly difficult to find porography online, I have trouble believing that statement, Borgschulze. I'm sure you're quoting a statistic you read somewhere, and I'm not trying to undermine your personal credibility.

The internet is for porn!
The internet is for porn!
Grab your dick and double click for porn, porn, porn!

[nick]

Gilby, you're kind of a big deal, eh?

[Seager]

I don't understand why people would use a url minimizer for anything other than forum posts, chatting, or things of that nature. Why would anyone use it on a regular web page?

[Borgschulze]

Originally Posted by unisteve

Even though I don't find it particularly difficult to find porography online, I have trouble believing that statement, Borgschulze. I'm sure you're quoting a statistic you read somewhere, and I'm not trying to undermine your personal credibility.

I still think most people actually use the internet for communication and looking for information, not just porn.

EDIT: Then again, I might be a little optimistic.

I did look for the article, but I have no clue as to the page I read it on.

It showed basically pie graphs, with things such as, "News, Porn, Family Entertainment, How To, etc..."

Things like that, based on actual domains.

Originally Posted by Seager

I don't understand why people would use a url minimizer for anything other than forum posts, chatting, or things of that nature. Why would anyone use it on a regular web page?

The only use I can find for TinyURL is for IM's.

On a forum you can do this, so why would you need to shorten the URL?

[johnfoss]

Originally Posted by unisteve

Even though I don't find it particularly difficult to find porography online, I have trouble believing that statement, Borgschulze. I'm sure you're quoting a statistic you read somewhere, and I'm not trying to undermine your personal credibility.

Borgschulze has credibility? I'm sure he's misquoting something he paraphrased from something else. Porn is a huge business on the Internet, but if what you said is true, could you send me any URLs to the porn on my web site?

Originally Posted by nick

Gilby, you're kind of a big deal, eh?

No, in fact he's a Tiny one. Congrats on getting more press! And yes, it's positive press in case anyone doesn't follow how that kind of thing works.

I don't intend to read the SlashDot discussion, but I have a simple answer to why "the world" doesn't need to worry about site owners like Gilby attaching pop-ups to their redirects. As soon as someone noticed this was happening, they'd probably stop using that service instantly. How's that for incentive to not do annoying stuff?

I agree with Seager and Borgschuze though on the question of why do people need to use URL-shrinkers when they can create hyperlinks (in other words, eliminating the major problems of giant URLs)?

[Borgschulze]

Originally Posted by johnfoss

Borgschulze has credibility? I'm sure he's misquoting something he paraphrased from something else. Porn is a huge business on the Internet, but if what you said is true, could you send me any URLs to the porn on my web site?

I do not consider my post a credible one considering I can't find the article to back it up, must be those damn TinyURLs.

I think Steve was just in a case of "Using big words to look smart". That or he was implying I'm stupid for making posts without information to back it up.

I don't purposely post arguments like that unless I am 100% sure I read it somewhere and it wasn't being sarcastic.

Originally Posted by johnfoss

I agree with Seager and Borgschuze though on the question of why do people need to use URL-shrinkers when they can create hyperlinks (in other words, eliminating the major problems of giant URLs)?

Infact, to incorporate a TinyURL link into your own personal website would be more work than just making a hyperlink wouldn't it?

Say someone uses Frontpage to make a website.

Hyperlink:
Make page 1 and 2.
Click insert hyperlink button on page 1.
Copy URL of page 2 into the box.
Done.

TinyURL:
Make page 1 and 2.
Copy page 2 URL.
Open TinyURL website and paste URL.
Copy new URL.
Go to Frontpage.
Click insert hyperlink button on page 1.
Copy URL from TinyURL into the box.
Done.

Who in the world would go through that much more trouble to use TinyURLs on a website? An Insane person wrote that article?

[john_childs]

The story continues:

TinyURL Outage Illustrates the Service's Risks

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / November 19, 2007 / 20 comments

The link shortening and redirection service TinyURL went down apparently for hours last night (it's still down, in fact), rendering countless links broken across the web. Complaints have been particularly loud on Twitter, where long links are automatically turned to TinyURLs and complaining is easy to do, but the service is widely used in emails and web pages as well. The site claims to service 1.6 billion hits each month.

That article also has 375 diggs at this time. Did it make it to the front page of Digg?