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.
