{"id":1122,"date":"2010-11-02T04:52:39","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T09:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=1122"},"modified":"2010-11-02T04:52:39","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T09:52:39","slug":"why-i-hate-bit-ly-and-wish-we-had-an-alternative-to-url-shorteners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2010\/11\/02\/why-i-hate-bit-ly-and-wish-we-had-an-alternative-to-url-shorteners\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 Why I hate Bit.ly and wish we had an alternative to URL Shorteners"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:2917,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.flickr.com\\\/photos\\\/adamjackson\\\/2635020316&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20190206093226\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.flickr.com\\\/photos\\\/adamjackson\\\/2635020316\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-04 02:02:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-01 18:56:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-14 22:56:53&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-26 11:20:38&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-07 00:18:24&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-08 08:26:38&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-15 01:18:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-15 01:18:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a title=\"Twitter FailWhale Poster by adamjackson1984, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/adamjackson\/2635020316\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img  loading=\"lazy\"  decoding=\"async\"  class=\"aligncenter pk-lazyload\"  src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABAQMAAAAl21bKAAAAA1BMVEUAAP+KeNJXAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAAAlwSFlzAAAOxAAADsQBlSsOGwAAAApJREFUCNdjYAAAAAIAAeIhvDMAAAAASUVORK5CYII=\"  alt=\"Twitter FailWhale Poster\"  width=\"640\"  height=\"480\"  data-pk-sizes=\"auto\"  data-pk-src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3044\/2635020316_d9e7709734_z.jpg\" ><\/a><br \/>\nA very large number of tweets contain links. This was a statement made by Twitter last month and I\u2019ll assume that they\u2019re excluding mentions of someone\u2019s twitter name (ie @adamjackson) and I think the number was that a majority of tweets contain links. I know that many of mine do especially since I\u2019ve taken my curated break.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Oh that\u2019s right, yeah, I took this 2 (now 3) week break and decided to switch to less moment to moment tweets and do more broadcasting of blog posts, photos and long-hand content so basically, every tweet from me over the past 2.5 weeks is links to things and not just tweets.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">URL shorteners are great! It helps me share links in tweets and over email and it makes long links less ugly and more portable but, like an email service or web site, Bit.ly can go down and so can other shorteners. It\u2019s not really just bit.ly. In fact, their service is probably the best available right now next to Google\u2019s Goo.gl service that is supposedly faster than Bit.ly. My point is, I\u2019m such an advocate for owning my own data, having copies and posterity through backup systems, co-location and making duplicates that I forgot that the \u201cawesome cool blog post\u201d that was shared out via Twitter 3 years ago could be a broken link 3 years from now and I\u2019ll forget what I shared.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The same goes for any link, really. If I link to a magazine article online and that magazine goes under, the link dies. Yeah, I get that but New York Times going under is far less likely than Bit.ly being acquired or just dying out but maybe I\u2019m just being overly sensitive.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Every time I see a startup get purchased, I feel bad for the users. Drop.io was purchased by Facebook and the service will shut down on December 15<sup>th<\/sup>. That\u2019s sad because some people really liked and used the service and even paid for it and now it\u2019s just gone. What will happen with the billions of Bit.ly links just die because the service goes away?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Think about that for a moment. If 30-50% of all tweets contain links and Bit.ly has 70%+ of the market, that\u2019s billions of shortened links that will forever be broken. Twitter doesn\u2019t seem to care because their aspect is on NOW and not on later. Who wants to read old tweets? That\u2019s their direction with a lot of things like you can\u2019t search Twitter more than 14-21 days in the past and it\u2019s hard to go back very far the way their interface is setup. I can\u2019t do twitter.com\/adamjackson\/2007\/03\/21 (the day I signed up) and see those tweets like I could on Flickr. Heck, I can\u2019t even search my own tweets back very far but I\u2019ve found ways around that (Backupify and favors from employees at Twitter).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Something bothers me that I have TinyURL and Bit.ly links in my very old Twitter archives (some that are 3 years old) that may not be accessible one day if those services go away. Most of the content was links to things I posted on my blog or photos so those are still on Flickr and my personal blog but I\u2019m uneasy about it. And yes, every day, every post, comment and photo uploaded to Facebook, Flickr. Gmail, Google Docs and WordPress is backed up to Amazon S3 (POSTERITY!) but what I don\u2019t have control over is Bit.ly\u2019s service.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll create my own service that is self-hosted since I\u2019m not that techie like some people but it\u2019s something that bugs me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Maybe I\u2019m the only person that cares? Do you care if your links shared over Twitter and Facebook 3 years from now won\u2019t work if Bit.ly goes away?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I do. I don\u2019t do things for the now. I do them for the later and later, I want to be able to access what happened now. For most users of social media, it\u2019s the other way around so perhaps I\u2019m crazy. I just don\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Mini-Rant over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A very large number of tweets contain links. This was a statement made by Twitter last month and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-rants","7":"category-social-media","8":"category-technology","9":"cs-entry","10":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-i6","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3957,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2013\/07\/16\/linked-link-posts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1122,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 Linked: Link Posts","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"via ShawnBlanc: I meant to link to this one a VERY long time ago (like January) but it fell into a folder of stuff I forgot about. Links shared on Twitter are relatively fleeting. Isn\u2019t the average lifespan of a Tweet something like 120 seconds? Thus, someone who checks Twitter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":894,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2010\/06\/10\/why-i-delete-my-twitter-replies\/","url_meta":{"origin":1122,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 Why I Delete My Twitter Replies","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"June 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Since coming back to Twitter full time in March, I've been trying new things but first, a little history on my Twitter \u00a0style and how it has changed. I used to reply to everyone. Then, I replied very selectively and never did more than 1 or 2 responses before ending\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Social Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Social Media","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/social-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3494,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2012\/01\/17\/adam-why-dont-you-follow-celebrities-on-twitter-theyre-sooooo-entertaining\/","url_meta":{"origin":1122,"position":2},"title":"\u2605 Adam, why don&#8217;t you follow celebrities on Twitter? They&#8217;re SOOOOO entertaining!","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"January 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I get asked this pretty often so, following the\u00a0festivities\u00a0of this weekend, I opened on my home iMac a few tabs of people I met who are \"celebrities\" but YouTube stars which is different than a real celebrity. Anyway, I gave it 48 hours. Basically, twice a day I refresh the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Social Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Social Media","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/social-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Screen-Shot-2012-01-17-at-4.28.17-PM11.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":373,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/06\/16\/hacking-twitter-replies-and-pissing-people-off\/","url_meta":{"origin":1122,"position":3},"title":"\u2605 Hacking Twitter Replies (And Pissing People Off)","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"June 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier, I tweeted: Seriously. Everyone that keeps adding a period or brackets when you @ someone so it shows up in my timeline. It's dumb and I hate it! Some people weren't quite sure what I was talking about so let's break down how replies work. Oh I'm sorry \"mentions\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Rants&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7346,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2018\/04\/02\/linked-twitter-adding-threaded-tweets\/","url_meta":{"origin":1122,"position":4},"title":"Linked: Twitter adding threaded tweets","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Nice Threads: Now, hundreds of thousands of threads are Tweeted every day! But this method of Tweeting, while effective and popular, can be tricky for some to create and it\u2019s often tough to read or discover all the Tweets in a thread. That\u2019s why we\u2019re thrilled to share that we\u2019re\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2008,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/03\/23\/24-hours-of-twitter-traffic-in-london\/","url_meta":{"origin":1122,"position":5},"title":"\u2605 24 Hours of Twitter Traffic in London","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"via SIMULARCA: Following on from yesterday\u2019s blog post on public transport in the UK, here comes an animation of the Twitter traffic in London during 24 hours. Tweets are shown as red circles, and re-tweets as yellow points moving in the direction of information, i.e. from the original tweets towards\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}