TinyURL and Twitter
March 11th, 2007Akshay Java on the importance of short URL tools, especially lately:
"[w]ith the growth of micro-blogging and mobile applications, TinyURL seems to be an important service that is sure to become even more popular. I have found that, from the sample of logs of the public timeline in Twitter, about 68% of the URLs used by “twitterers” were resolved via TinyURL."
I’ve been thinking about this too. Investors should invest more in these services, no? They will only continue to get more popular.
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March 11th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Hmm, I agree with where your coming from - but don’t forget investors invest in what is profitable, not necessarily what is popular.
Sadly it is very hard to monetize a service like TunyURL - despite the fact it is useful. The trouble is that it’s a “transparent service” - you never actually get to see a page on TinyURL’s servers other than when you create the original link (and even then that’s avoidable via API). No page views = no ads. People won’t pay to create a link either, it’s not defensible as a business practice - there are many other services that do the same thing, and most geeks could create another in an afternoon of their spare time.
A few months back someone wrote how attention data could be clawed from the urls entered - but even that is severely flawed as it’s only a certain kind of link in a certain setting that needs to be tinyurl’d.
I think TinyURL (and the other services that do this) are a happy example of people’s generosity to put something useful back into the internet ecosystem that they ultimately don’t expect to turn a profit - they may even run at a loss.
March 18th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
In fact, twitter is automatic converting the long urls in “tinyURLs”, not the users themselves. I think there are a partnership between the two services.