| What's the benefit of a link shortener, these days? It made sense back before Twitter had one of their own. And I know that some people use it to get link analytics. I've also occasionally seen it used for printed materials, to get pretty URLs that are easy to hand-type. People also use it for malicious purposes, such as hiding malware, or disguising referral links, or otherwise trying to obfuscate where a link is going. (Note: I'm not calling referral links malicious, I'm calling disguised referral links malicious.) Other than printed materials (which need pretty URLs and thus often need a dedicated first-party URL shortener) and analytics, what are people using third-party URL shorteners for today? |
I also use it to hedge my risks from using SaaS. For my org, we host some things that we offer to the public on different services. Sometimes a vendor doesn't work out. We use our shortened URLs in public communications, and I can redirect them to our new service if we need to switch. It was a way to address my discomfort with URLs that break too easily when you host on 3rd party services.