Tag Archives: social media

Today just must be my day for commentary on social media…

Posted on by

In case you’re ever interested, there’s a really great piece of open source software called YouURLS available at Yourls.org.  It is a LAMP1 architecture URL shortening software.  It’s about as easy to install as WordPress and reasonably barebones.  But, once installed, “it just works.”  A few weeks ago I became enamored with the idea of having my own URL shortener, so I went out on the hunt for possible cool names.  A lot of the good short names are already taken, prohibitively expensive2 , or are reserved/unavailable since many TLD’s3 don’t allow 1 and 2 letter domains. 4

There are some potential problems with running your own short URL service.  First, if you don’t intend to keep it around forever it isn’t that much use to people in general.  Second, the market space is pretty well packed already.  Third, anyone can have their very own URL service for the price of a domain name5 , some hosting6 , and an installation of YOURLS7 .  Fourth, some spammers/scammers/phishers are always on the lookout for legitimate but unknown URL shorteners so they can obfuscate their spammy/scammy URL’s – and you don’t want to be associated with that kinda mess anyhow.

But, if you just want one because you really like the idea and aren’t going to make it public to anyone else…  why not do it?  Want to know the short URL domain name I chose?  Well, I’m going to tell you anyhow.

http://shor.tw

Cool, huh?  It fit all of my criteria.  It wasn’t too expensive8 , is very short at just 7 characters for the entire URL910 , and is memorable/clever.  It’s not public, because I don’t want to deal with spammers and whatnot, but I can think of a number of cool uses for such a service.  And, of course, I’d welcome any of your suggestions.

  1. Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, natch [↩]
  2. As in $150-$500/year [↩]
  3. Top level domains – .com, .net, etc [↩]
  4. When you’re Twitter getting hold of the person in charge of holding the reserved “t.co” was probably not a problem. [↩]
  5. Which is cheap starting at 1.99 [↩]
  6. Free to cheap [↩]
  7. Free to modest, if you have someone install it for you [↩]
  8. At $35/year it was more expensive than any URL I have ever purchased, but still quite modest [↩]
  9. Not counting the “HTTP://”, which is the same no matter what you have. [↩]
  10. It is even shorter than one of the first such services, TinyURL.com which is 11 characters [↩]

Twitter’s cute little information gathering tool… the short URL

Posted on by

You’ve probably seen Twitter’s URL shortener, “t.co”, pop up in links.  Then again, you might not even realize it’s there.  Whenever you post a link, it will be shortened with this service automatically.  Interestingly, even a URL that is short enough already, or shortened with another service, will still be shortened into a “t.co” short link.  Their FAQ suggests that all of your links and even your URL shorteners will still work.  It’s just that your click will get passed through “t.co” before it goes on to the URL shortener and then on to your final destination. 1

The reason why seems pretty obvious – because they want to see what people are clicking on and why.  As with other social websites, the users are the product and commodity being sold to advertisers.  Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have a philosophical problem with this.  It seems a decent and legitimate enterprise and a reasonable bargain with the end user for the free use of their service. 2

So, I’m the kind of guy who, seeing a link on a website will sometimes copy and paste that link into an open browser tab, rather than clicking on it.  Sure, it’s 10 more seconds out of my day – but it gives me a perverse little bit of pleasure to thwart such information surveillance.  Imagine my surprise today to discover that this didn’t work!  I went to Twitter, highlighted and copied a Bit.ly link, and pasted it into an address bar.  But what appeared was the “t.co” link!  I figured I must have messed up the coping, so I did it again. 3  Again, I get the “t.co” link.  Once more into the breach.  Again, the same “t.co” link.

Then I notice that each time I hit “Ctrl-C” or right click on the highlighted link the link text flashes for just a moment.  I do it a few more times and realize what’s happening.

Whenever the Javascript in Twitter’s website detects a “Ctrl-C” or right mouse click on a link, which has the CSS class “twitter-timeline-link”, it will swap out the text of the URL for the “t.co” shortened URL.

This little bit of tech just tickles me.  I can conceive of a legitimate reason for this behavior – ubiquitous and imperceptible URL shortening for the ease of all users. 4  But, really, this is just about controlling all links that originate from Twitter so that they can aggregate and analyze.  I just admire this behavior because it is just so slick and nearly totally seamless.

  1. I would point out that when the URL appears in an RSS feed, it shows up as a “t.co” link, which goes through “bit.ly”, instead of the actual link itself. [↩]
  2. I’m not trying to describe their service in any pejorative terms, I’m just trying to describe it accurately.  I don’t think anyone would dispute this is their business model. [↩]
  3. After all, Ctrl-C can get pretty complicated. [↩]
  4. Perhaps you were going to copy/paste the URL into an e-mail and now you won’t have to worry about a broken URL [↩]