[bigiain]

"all over the web?"

Do people really use URL shorteners for anything other than Twitter? (and,perhaps Rickrolling?)

I suspect you could delete every url shortener database right now, and after a week nobody would even notice. I'm pretty sure the majority of shortener uses are for Twitter (for obvious reasons, and who reads tweets more than a few days old?) and for intentional hiding of destination urls (Oh look, I'm pretending to provide useful information, instead I'm linking you to a funny cat picture!). I find it hard to believe any information or knowledge hidden behind bit.ly links is of any real value in improving the human condition...

(but I've been seriously wrong about emergent behavior amongst the general public before... I fully expect to have someone point out phd research papers with all the citations done with bit.ly links now...)