When A URL Shortener Hub Goes Down… All Links Die Too

Originally shared by Louis Gray

When A URL Shortener Hub Goes Down… All Links Die Too

Over the last few years, URL shorteners (like Bitly’s bit.ly, Twitter’s t.co and Google’s goo.gl) have increased, so you can share links in fewer characters, and, in many cases, track the number of clicks, with analytics.

But what happens when the short URL domain goes down? Every link shared with that shortener no longer works. Make that the only way to share on your service? Well, you’re going to have a bad time. Twitter’s t.co is down now, making for an interesting test case. I recognize the value of these short URLs, but think the old-fashioned way of canonical URLs with proper directory structure… well, they have value too.

http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/10/08/twitters-t-co-is-currently-down-meaning-all-links-shortened-by-the-social-network-are-not-working///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js