TinyURL

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TinyURL

Screenshot as of 01/05/08
URL www.tinyurl.com
Slogan Making long URLs usable!
Commercial? Yes
Type of site URL redirection
Registration No
Owner Gilby Productions
Created by Kevin Gilbertson
Launched 2002
Revenue None, Donations
Current status Active

TinyURL (tinyurl.com) is a web service created by Kevin Gilbertson that provides short aliases to redirect long URLs. Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January 2002 because he wanted to be able to link directly to newsgroup postings which frequently had long and cumbersome addresses.

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[edit] Service

The TinyURL website has a text box to enter a long URL. For each URL entered, the server adds a new alias in its hashed database and returns a short URL such as http://tinyurl.com/dmsfm. If the URL has already been requested, TinyURL will return the existing alias rather than creating a duplicate entry. The shorter URL is forwarded to the longer one.

Short URL aliases are seen as useful because they're easier to write down, remember or pass around, are less error-prone to write, and also fit where space is limited such as IRC channel topics, email signatures, or microblogs that have a character limit for each post (140 in the case of Twitter). Also some email clients impose a maximum length at which they automatically break lines requiring the user to paste together a long URL rather than just clicking on it. A short URL alias is much less likely to become broken.

[edit] Criticism

The convenience offered by a TinyURL also introduces potential problems, which have led to criticism of the use of TinyURLs.

TinyURLs are opaque, hiding the ultimate destination from a web user. This can be used to send people unwittingly to sites that offend their sensibilities, or crash or compromise their computer using browser vulnerabilities. To help combat such abuse, TinyURL allows a user to set a cookie-based preference such that TinyURL stops at the TinyURL website, giving a preview of the final link, when that user clicks TinyURLs. Substituting preview.tinyurl.com for tinyurl.com in the URL is another way of stopping at a preview of the final link before clicking through to it. Additionally, third party preview solutions exist[1]. Opaqueness is also leveraged by spammers, who can use such links in spam (mostly blog spam), bypassing URL blacklists.

A more serious problem with URL resolvers in general is that they create a single point of failure for all URLs passed through the service.

In 2006, MySpace banned posting any TinyURLs.[2]

As of 2008, Facebook also does not allow the posting of TinyURLs.

Yahoo! Answers also experience errors when posting TinyURL links. "Sorry, Unable to process request at this time -- error 999." Error Message

[edit] Early abuses

Early on, the creation of TinyURL IDs was predictable, and therefore could be exploited by users to create vulgar associations. For example, http://tinyurl.com/dick was made to link to the White House website of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, and http://tinyurl.com/cunt was made to link to the website of Second Lady Lynne Cheney. Both now return a message apologizing for any offense.

[edit] TinyURL-whacking

TinyURL's method of allocating shorter web addresses has been exploited by an action known as TinyURL-whacking. Random letters and numbers can be placed after the first forward slash in an attempt to hit interesting sites without knowing in advance what they will be.[3][4]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Third Party Tools
  2. ^ blog.eater.org: Myspace Censoring TinyURL
  3. ^ tinyurl whacking - full of grandiose schemes
  4. ^ New Scientist, vol. 179, issue 2404, 19 July 2003, page 84

[edit] External links