In a piece on his blog, Joshua Schachter argues that URL shortening services are bad news:

The worst problem is that shortening services add another layer of indirection to an already creaky system. A regular hyperlink implicates a browser, its DNS resolver, the publisher’s DNS server, and the publisher’s website. With a shortening service, you’re adding something that acts like a third DNS resolver, except one that is assembled out of unvetted PHP and MySQL, without the benevolent oversight of luminaries like Dan Kaminsky and St. Postel.

Joshua points out that in relying on a web service’s database to resolve all of our links, we are placing a lot of faith in them being able to stay online, and to maintain all of their data indefinitely. Were TinyURL to suddenly disappear, a huge chunk of the links and information on sites such as Twitter would be rendered useless. Archiveteam.org points out exactly what is wrong with this approach:

Twitter is a great example of what’s wrong with trusting an online service with something of value. Check out some ‘tweets’:

• Hah, I’m a Zombie! http://tinyurl.com/8gnnb7 Ahh, the fun we all have with each other. about 1 hour ago from web
• Health privacy is dead. Here’s why: http://ff.im/GMpx about 14 hours ago from FriendFeed
• Hmm, friendfeed released a new “import Twitter” feature today. It is taking a LONG time on my account. I wonder why…. http://ff.im/GM5W about 14 hours ago from FriendFeed

If these TinyURL services go away, there’s not much content here.

Jason Kottke would like to see Twitter running its own shortening service. This will remove the problem of dead links, since the Twitter-shortened URLs will be around for as long as Twitter is. It does not however address the issue of opaque links – that is not knowing the target of the link.

1) That they automatically unshorten all URLs except when the 140 character limit is necessary in SMS messages.

2) In cases where shortening is necessary, Twitter should automatically use a shortener of their own.

That way, users know what they’re getting and as long as Twitter is around, those links stay alive.

I think this would go a long way towards avoiding the problem (for Twitter at least).