[yebyen]

He used his own custom URL, which is cleverer because he can take it with him, but not so clever because ... reason we are having this conversation now, you have to think this through! I've never used Bit.ly's hosted service, but he already said there's no way to export the data. So, hopefully clear there is some data, Bit.ly has a list of shared URLs from his customers, and they've populated a database with some short codes in order to redirect them.

They are (correct me if I'm not understanding how this service works) the only ones in a position to know which short URLs are already used and which ones are not.

So, if the list of short codes is short enough that he can search it in a couple of days and follow all of the links, then that's obviously what he should be doing rather than having public gripe time on HN.

(Then again, if he pays them just once he gets a decent bit of extra time, and they get paid for providing the service when his business was too small to justify him bringing his own infrastructure. Win-win?)