Nowadays I see them mostly used by creators for sponsor or product links, probably because it lets them track how many people click on it and when
Comment on Bitly adds interstitial ads to shortened URLs, unlocking new revenue stream
TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
I don’t understand in what circumstances anyone would like to use link shorteners? I can only find reasons why not to use them:
- subject visitors to surveillance
- destination under the control of a third party (potential for ransom for the author, like we see here, and potential of ads for visitors like we see here)
- obfuscation of the actual destination
- how long will the redirect be valid for? It could be deemed unviable for the company to continue support of the redirect, thus rendering the destination inaccessible from all places where the shortened link is used.
- more…?
Dima@feddit.uk 6 days ago
SomGye@dormi.zone 6 days ago
Those are all valid. For me, the two reasons I like to use one is:
- Better for social media with very limited characters
- You can choose the “slug” and make your source link into an easy to remember link that works anywhere (only on certain shorteners, I use one that lets you do this for free)
Bonus reason I guess: - When source link needs to be updated but you want to keep the same destination URL, you can do this via the shortener service and now you don’t have to update that link in the code or data of your websites that use it. (Some shorteners don’t support this, I use one that does)
tja@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Better for social media with very limited characters
- You can choose the “slug” and make your source link
Which ones would that be? I thought they all are now counting URLs as a set number of characters?
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Urls can be too long to be memorable and useful on a audio medium like radio or podcasts. So if you can give them a domain they know and a keyword or phrase it becomes extremely useful.
TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
I hear you, I always see this problem being solved by the link being in the description and the host saying “link in the description”. I hadn’t come across a situation where an audio only format was accessible and there was no way to interact with the content but in some corner cases it does make sense.
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 6 days ago
The number of pods with no show notes is way too high.
asap@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Home automation. Great for making QR codes with a low density (since the link is short).