(void* dan)

How To Improve bit.ly 200%

If I wanted to tweet about a silly magnifier glass iPhone application, today I could tweet

What a pointless iPhone app http://bit.ly/172F9b !

But that uses too many characters just on the shortened URL without expressing anything!  We should be succinct and stop wasting random letters on bit.ly’s unique id:

What a http://bit.ly/pointless_iPhone_app!

Now that’s a nice (and short!) URL.  bit.ly is 6 characters.  The unique id they use (in this example 172F9b) is also 6 characters.  By dumping the unique id entirely and allowing custom text in the URL, bit.ly would waste only half as many characters and become an integral part of the message.


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