I recently started twittering again (and will probably give up again shortly) and it occurred to me that I really dislike url shortening services. Twitter uses them for long urls which makes some sort of sense. If all of their users could shave a few bytes of information whenever they posted a link, the savings would add up quickly. I just really don’t like the shortened urls. I don’t find them any easier to click and they obscure some important information. For instance, how do you know to what the url connects? I like to see the server and path of links that I go to. It helps me guess at what’s on the other end. There’s also the deal that trackbacks and other internet metadata techniques are blocked by url shortening services. Because the url no longer points to the original page but instead to a redirection service, it affects a lot of other services. I consider it a defect of Twitter that I’m forced to use TinyURL. I’m sure it helps with disk space and memory issues when spread across the entire system but I’d really like a feature to turn it off for when I use a link.