The longevity of short URLs (or any form of redirect) is their primary drawback. Having one company bail out another is not a long-term strategy. The only long-term way to make sure redirects continue to function is to have some kind of open, federated redirect service (which might be what 301works is trying to achieve). However, the kind of flexibility inherent in a federated service implies that the links would not be very short (e.g. 301works.com/bit.ly/abcdef), so they would at best be a backup solution.
The long-term solution for shortlinks is very unclear, as long as services (and who are we kidding: we mean Twitter) require them. Twitter could solve it by allowing metadata around links, but that would break their 140-character protocol, which has been a big factor in their success.
I don't have a solution, or I'd be building a startup around it right now :-)
Twitter could also just have their own URL shortener and require it be used which ensures all links on Twitter last just as long as Twitter does. The web interface could even show expanded URLs (or at least ___domain) since they'd automatically have that information on hand.
Twitter could solve it by allowing metadata around links
Twitter could also solve it by upping the 140 character limit to something more reasonable. Any magic reason for the 140 char limit is pretty much gone now.
In the end, I don't know how much any of this matters, Twitter seems overrun by marketeers and self-promoters now, hard to tell if there is enough of a future in it for the URL shorteners to really have much of a future.
> Any magic reason for the 140 char limit is pretty much gone now.
This is incredibly short-sighted. I, for one, still only use Twitter via text. If Twitter allowed for longer messages, I'd be out, as would many of the people that I know.
The plural of anecdote is not data, but just becasue everyone you know uses an app, does not mean that everyone does. I'm sure txt is still _really important_ to Twitter overall.
from what i remember, twitter used to allow >140 character message updates through their website, and just truncated them to 140 when sending them to sms users.
> The longevity of short URLs (or any form of redirect) is their primary drawback. Having one company bail out another is not a long-term strategy. The only long-term way to make sure redirects continue to function is to have some kind of open, federated redirect service (which might be what 301works is trying to achieve). However, the kind of flexibility inherent in a federated service implies that the links would not be very short (e.g. 301works.com/bit.ly/abcdef), so they would at best be a backup solution.
Or someone specifically concerned about longevity: http://purl.org (those aren't short either though).
The long-term solution for shortlinks is very unclear, as long as services (and who are we kidding: we mean Twitter) require them. Twitter could solve it by allowing metadata around links, but that would break their 140-character protocol, which has been a big factor in their success.
I don't have a solution, or I'd be building a startup around it right now :-)