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Do you use URL shortening services?

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

A bit ago, there was a conversation about image hosting sites starting to charge.  So started to experiment with hosting images.  So far so good.  Having challenges with animated gifs, but set it aside so I can clear my head and take a new approach.  Started to thinking on URL shortening sites.

Does anyone use them?  If so which ones and what do you like about each vs. the other.  I poked around a couple and wow the amount of advertisements is unreal.
 
Social sites automatically shorten for you now. Now need to visit the actual site and be bombarded with the ads. They rarely get trafficked. Bad business plan there AJ.
 
The only reason they became popular was a long link could take up a whole tweet. Then twitter started their own shortening service which is does automatically in tweets. Other sites followed. Why would you want to start a URL shortening service? Are you stuck in 2009? ;)
 
Stuck in 2009 I guess.  Had no clue the social media sites were doing the shortning.  So what isnt dominated by Twitter, Facebook or the likes?
 
Well it makes sense for them, so posts don't look ugly with long links. It's not like they took over the world and want to rule URL shortening lol.
 
I suspect it is also data collection  If a social site just puts the link as it is or does what THP does where you can put a title on the link to hide the ugly, then a click goes right to the url itself.  If you bounce it off your own server with a forward, you can collect information on who is visiting the link, how popular the link is, and so on.  I am sure that sort of information is valuable for their advertising programs.

The advertisements I get are so very accurate to the things I purchase or search for these days.  It is amazing  Wife is to the point where she almost believes they red her mind.
 
They actually have ways to track who clicks outbound links when they are not formatted to their own.
 
But yeah the service can track the links that are posted elsewhere that use their shortening.
 
So you want to get into data collection? That is your reasoning? 
 
The Hot Pepper said:
So you want to get into data collection? That is your reasoning? 
Click to expand...
 
Just the opposite really.  Kind of bugged by how invasive and manipulative social media has become. Just sort of pondering.  Its winter, so I get bored easily.
 
 
I've got an idea on a URL lengthener. 
 
AJ Drew said:
 
Just the opposite really.  Kind of bugged by how invasive and manipulative social media has become. Just sort of pondering.  Its winter, so I get bored easily.
 
Click to expand...
That is 5%, I can only imagine what ads you see here based on the threads you start. :)
 
Amazon, Google and everything else is mining your data.
 
JoynersHotPeppers said:
That is 5%, I can only imagine what ads you see here based on the threads you start. :)
 
Amazon, Google and everything else is mining your data.
Click to expand...
 
I am absolutely sure most of the adverts here are from google, which I think owns Youtube.  Reason being, this lap top is usually signed into my wife's youtube account.  She has Youtube gold or what ever it is called.  Anyway, I know her and here on THP the adverts are all hers.  She is a major Amazon Prime addict and most of the adverts here are Amazon Prime.
 
Right now I am looking at Pringles from Amazon Prime of all places. No clue how they do it, but it is cheaper to buy potato chips from Amazon with free shipping than driving to Walmart.  Me, I am holding out for drone delivery.  Mainly cause I wanna try Drone Skeet.

Pull!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBZSgTCL_n0
 
 
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