TinyURL

TinyURL.com asks, "Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together?"

Stumbles off the tongue, eh? My question: How, in the era of cut-and-paste, has a minor, and rare, quirk of some email programs led to (what seems to me to be) the growing success of this new service? Also, don't most email programs allow you to embed a link underneath text?

What's the advantage?

Comments

Actually if I had to guess I'd say Twitter is the source of its success. With character's at a premium, TinyURL comes in quite handy when sharing links via Twitter.

Posted by: Jake on April 1, 2008 12:04 PM

Brian: I think it's more of an advantage to the computer-semiliterate.

Jake: TinyURL is 4 years the elder of Twitter.

Posted by: Minivet on April 1, 2008 01:00 PM

Minivet: Right, I guess my point was it actually become useful/popular thanks to Twitter.

Posted by: Jake on April 1, 2008 02:00 PM

Most email programs do allow you embed a link in text, but lots of people--including me--don't like receiving HTML email. I only send plain text, and when I put a link in, it seems linke it's a 50/50 shot as to whether the recipient's client will correctly parse a long link. Hence the utility of tinyurl.

Posted by: Ben on April 2, 2008 11:38 AM

Worth pointing out: Twitter actually shortens URLs automatically using tinyURL when a tweet contains one. This doesn't happen all the time, but for longer URLs it does.

Posted by: Tom on April 2, 2008 08:27 PM

1). I was actually hoping for (and half expecting Tom's input.

2). That explains a lot about my assumption that tiny urls were the new black.

Posted by: Brian on April 2, 2008 10:57 PM

Plain text e-mail is alive and kicking. Also forums w/ no HTML links, twitter, and character-limited setting, and any time when you want to obscure the destination of a link:

http://tinyurl.com/2msmwl

Posted by: LS on April 5, 2008 11:25 PM

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