Talk:TinyURL

message: At the very end of the crisicism section, I found this quote, all by its lonesome:
"and also a new shorten URL for map URL can be found at http://www.LocationMap.org and http://www.LocationMap.biz for shorten business map URL"
Due to its complete lack of cohesion with the rest of the section, I removed it. If someone wants to clean it up and add it to the other links section, feel free.  Serge (talk) 06:57, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential Advertising? 

message: according to this blog,  masl.to (make a link shorter) existed since 2001, before tinrurl and was bought of by tinyurl sometime between Mar 05, 2006 and Jan 19, 2007
according to the waybackmachine
how much money is behind tinyurl? how is it used? where does it come from? just adsense and donations?
--iftrueelsefalse 03:30, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Money 

message: Just wondered if anyone had any info on the people who set it up in the first pace? CharlesC 10:17, 4 January 2006 (UTC
Gilby Productions
4047 86th LN NE
Blaine, MN 55014
US
see uwhois.com. Greets, User:Keimzelle (but too lazy to log in now) --83.180.234.99 20:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  People behind it 

message: Can someone include a definative answer as to whether or not TINYURL's ever expire?
:"By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires." --Sketchee 06:19, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
The title seems wrong, I think? Should it not be TinyURL if it is referring to the actual service, even though it is becoming genericised?
--Coffeelover 23:07, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expiry 

message: Would it be fitting to put in some info about the infamous reputation of tinyurl urls leading to shock sites, as people can hide the urls of the shocksites behind a tinyurl?
02:15, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reputation 

message: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#tinyurl
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#More_suggestions_about_tinyurl
Travb 16:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems and suggestions about banning tinyurl

message: Was going to remove the nowiki tags, because there is no need for them. But it seems there is.....   couldn't it be taken of the blocklist or at least an exception be made for this one page somehow? Mathmo Talk 13:15, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I knooow, that's not possible. You might get a better answer at m:Spam blacklist and associated talk. Luna Santin 13:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yup, I've posted elsewhere in the hope of getting it working on this page. Mathmo Talk 06:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, this is an obvious exception. In the meantime I've used simplelink (a similar service). I've removed the link to simplelink's homepage as it's perhaps spam.--82.148.54.182 15:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Couldn't the blacklist be edited to just block addresses with something after tinyurl.com/ ? That way, it would not block the homepage (so we could link to it here), but it would block links trying to reach bad pages through TinyURL. — Insanity Incarnate 04:32, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sad, no clickable link. 

message: The alternatives should be listed alphabetically unless there is a good reason for doing otherwise, and so far no such reason has been provided. Tizio 19:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Furthermore, either we have a list of alternatives or none at all. Tizio 12:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order of alternatives 

message: I changed the example tinyurl to be the one that points to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TinyURL . It's not particularly better than the one that points at Main Page, but it's no worse, either. --ESP 03:52, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example tinyurl 

message: I am surprised no one has mentioned yet that if one day the service stops all the links that use it become invalid and irreparable. For me, that is a weakness enough to prevent its use other than in contents which will be used and discarded very soon. Outsid3r 06:59, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  When TinyURL is no more 

message: First, declaration of bias/conflict of interest: I am the author of a MUD client called RosMud++ (or just RosMud in common speech). This is a free program, I do not get any money from its use, but nonetheless it's my creation and therefore it may be a COI for me to mention it.
Reason for mentioning: RosMud includes a plugin which interfaces with TinyURL. Effectively, it allows you to simply type a URL as part of a command that you otherwise type, and (if it's too long) it will automatically be sent to tinyurl.com, the response parsed, and the substitute URL sent on in place of the original. I have had a number of verbal (or otherwise transient) acclaims for this, but there's nothing written down, so I have a feeling this may well fall below the criterion of noteworthiness.
URL: http://www.kepl.com.au/esstu/rosmud.html (scroll most of the way to the bottom or search for "tinyurl")
Rosuav (talk) 17:36, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that it's worth mentioning something solely on the basis that it can generate TinyURLs. I mean, I've been on dozens of IRC channels where the bot does it automatically on-channel when you  mention a URL. It's a good idea, but I don't think it's a notable one. The Wednesday Island (talk) 20:51, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I'm relatively new to Wikipedia editing and thought I'd better check first :) Rosuav (talk) 15:32, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Want to add something, but is it self-promotion/COI? 

message: I sent an email about the interruption of the auto-redirect to Dick Cheney's website via the TinyURL http://tinyurl.com/dick. I just received a response:
It's a pair of TinyURLs that this issue concerns.
- Gilby
TinyURL.com
A pair of TinyURLs... Knowing this, I started investigating. "What could be this second offensive tinyurl?" I found it.
http://tinyurl.com/cunt, which is a redirect to http://www.whitehouse.gov/mrscheney/, the website of Lynne Cheney. (→Zachary) 14:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The whole tinyurl.com/dick story 

message: The "TinyURL Generator Widget" link in the "External links" section leads to a webpage that has been blacklisted as fraudulent by Opera.  It may, therefore, need to be removed from the list. --Kitsunegami (talk) 21:41, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blacklisted External Link 

message: Is "TinyURL-whacking" real? Or enough so to be relevant? I'm not trying to cause trouble, it's just that I have been using TinyURL since close to the beginning and feel pretty familiar with the "culture" (floabt). And I have to say that I've never heard of TinyURL-whacking before reading this article. By no means does that deem it invalid, but I was certainly surprised to have learned of it here. Also, doesn't seem like much of an "exploit" as exploits go -- but maybe that's just my definition. Thanks Chabuhi (talk) 14:00, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Depends what you mean by "real". I thought of the idea one summer's day in 2002, played around, was mildly amused, wrote a brief blog post about it giving it that name, and thought no more of the matter.  A few months later I was woken up by a phone call from a journalist from Wired who wanted to interview me about the blog post.  Then from that the story was picked up by New Scientist and the Jerusalem Post.  So you see there are plenty of published sources, and it's clearly possible, but as to whether people really do it, I couldn't tell you. I'm not still doing it six years later, anyway. :) Marnanel (talk) 17:53, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Who changed the redirect in 2009, as the article stattes? there is no feature to do that, is there? --Nezek (talk) 21:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  TinyURL-whacking 

message: Removed this from the external links section:
* GiganticURL.com, a spoof of TinyURL
Seems to be broken. I haven't done a whois to see if the domain's still owned, but NS lookups are failing.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rosuav (talk • contribs) 04:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: fixed now  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.108.233.59 (talk) 08:39, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken link removal 

message: I've seen the thought raised in a few online coversations- What happens when the site crashes? Thousands of pages worldwide would be full of broken links. In some cases, the creators of said pages might not be able to remember what site it linked to initially. This could cause some serious problems. I think it could be considered critisicm, but there isn't really a way to cite it if included.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Flytape8490 (talk • contribs) 16:06, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The edit summary explains.  Firstly, you gave an incorrect URL.  But even when the URL was fixed, it was only to a press release, not to independent third party press coverage, which doesn't establish notability. The Wednesday Island (talk) 13:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism? 

message: The cite for the myspace ban is very weak, as it is a blog post and I can find no supporting evidence of such a ban when I did a search on myspace, actually I found a lot of areas that included a tiny url link.  CelticLabyrinth (talk) 16:30, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Myspace Ban? 

message: currently they use 6 letters after the slash and when all combinations of that have been used up they will go on to 7 right? eventually the tiny url might be too long to be useful81.108.233.59 (talk) 08:51, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  good point - should be in article although some nazi will come along and tell you wikipedia's not for original research - go put up a blog post about it and then it'll be ok...  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.65.171.170 (talk) 18:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:Reliable Sources. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 22:58, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  new critisism 

message: Why is the title text white on blue, instead of regular black on background? It looks pretty bad, imho--Unquenchablefire (talk) 21:02, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title text 

message: Can we have some sort of policy about what's allowed in "similar sites", so we don't turn into a link directory? The Wednesday Island (talk) 23:56, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can we have some sort of policy about what's allowed in "similar sites", so we don't turn into a link directory? 

message: The article states [with 'citation needed' marker] that using tinyurl in Yahoo!Answers often (or always) generates "error 999" which prevents an answer from being posted when the "submit" button is clicked.  In fact it is just the opposite.  Error 999 often (not always) occurs when trying to post an answer which contains a url that should link to another question on Yahoo!Answers. This may well be intended by Yahoo!Answers administration.  The user workaround, at least for the time being (Jan 2009) is to map the url to a tinyurl and put this as the link instead.  This ALLOWS the answer to be posted and AVOIDS the "error 999" message which normally blocks the answer from being posted.Jbuddenh (talk) 00:01, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Frankly, I don't see how Yahoo Answers's handling of TinyURLs is even noteable to this article. --Nezek (talk) 22:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yahoo!Answers and tinyurl 

message: I think that someone should check out where tiny url's are blocked. It doesn't seem real. I know that facebook allows it. Someone needs to ref it or delete it. Irunongamesplay 19:37, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: I think the criticism section is somewhat poorly or misleadingly worded. Take this sentence: "TinyURLs are subject to linkrot, in the case the service stops working, all URLs related to the service will become broken." That's perfectly true, of course, but at the same time much too sweeping a thing to say. It's true for all similar services that have been mushrooming recently, like is.gd, tr.im etc. In contrast to them, however, tinyurl.com has been around for almost a decade and there aren't even any rumors about a possible demise. (I'm pretty sure that since 2002, more of the actual original links have rotted away than their tinyurl shortcuts.) So if we're talking about the danger of services closing down, tinyurl is actually pretty safe bank.
The same can be said about the danger of "rickrolling" or spamming - first, again this is a downside of all url shorteners, not just of tinyurl. It's a simple trade-off - short/indirect vs. long/direct. Second, tinyurl has been offering "preview" links for years, unlike all the other new services. Of course, people unfamiliar with tinyurl may still suspect it's a spoof, but once you do know it (and by now, many people do), the preview feature gives you reasonable security. To sum up, (1) criticism referring to URL shorteners as such should not be mixed up with specific criticism of tinyurl. (2) Tinyurl should not be blamed for things it can do nothing about but actually handles better than any of its "cooler", more "web 2.0"-like competitors. 
Just to be clear, I'm in no way associated with the company. I've just been using it for years and feel it gets a bit of an unfair treatment here. Of course, that's probably because it used to be the epitome of URL shortening services, so it receives much of the criticism directed at URL shorteners as such. Still, with so many similar new services around, the criticism section needs to be updated urgently! Jimmy Fleischer (talk) 09:07, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Given the current climate of proliferation of abusers and scammers using short URLs, would it not be appropriate to mention that short URLs are widely used to obfuscate scam endpoints? WarrenTVoid (talk) 00:00, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism section 

message: The service status is wrong: the site works properly. Dgutson (talk) 20:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Service is not down 

message: "Early on, the resulting URL aliases of the service were predictable, and were exploited by users to create vulgar associations."
Now, with the custom shortcut feature, the creation of abusive redirects became much more easy. Should I add this to the article? 27.69.194.132 (talk) 11:10, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abusive redirects 

message: How big is TinyURL's namespace (i.e. the number of allowed permutations of letters and numbers in shortened URLs), and how many TinyURLs are currently registered? Credulity (talk) 10:26, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Size of URL space 

message: Most of the TinyURL page is about the concept; there is a URL shortening article which covers that. I suggest that this article should be converted to a redirect to that page; any unique text worth saving about the concept, and anything about TinyURL as against any other such site should be copied to the URL shortening page. Alternatively, this could be a short article about TinyURL, with a link to the other article for the details. If TinyURL was the first, that fact is certainly noteworthy. The same goes for other articles about individual URL shortening sites. Pol098 (talk) 16:42, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge into URL shortening? 

message: Cyberbot II has detected that page contains external links that have either been globally or locally blacklisted.
Links tend to be blacklisted because they have a history of being spammed, or are highly innappropriate for Wikipedia.
This, however, doesn't necessarily mean it's spam, or not a good link.
If the link is a good link, you may wish to request whitelisting by going to the request page for whitelisting.
If you feel the link being caught by the blacklist is a false positive, or no longer needed on the blacklist, you may request the regex be removed or altered at the blacklist request page.
If the link is blacklisted globally and you feel the above applies you may request to whitelist it using the before mentioned request page, or request it's removal, or alteration, at the request page on meta.
When requesting whitelisting, be sure to supply the link to be whitelisted and wrap the link in nowiki tags.
The whitelisting process can take its time so once a request has been filled out, you may set the invisible parameter on the tag to true.
Please be aware that the bot will replace removed tags, and will remove misplaced tags regularly.
Below is a list of links that were found on the main page:
*http://tinyurl.com/#toolbar
*:Triggered by \b(?:mobile|really)?tinyurls?\.(?:co\.uk|com|ru|tw|us)\b on the global blacklist
If you would like me to provide more information on the talk page, contact User:Cyberpower678 and ask him to program me with more info.
From your friendly hard working bot.—cyberbot II NotifyOnline 17:23, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blacklisted Links Found on the Main Page 

message: In the Service section the previewing of tinyurl links is discussed with an opinion of the availability of the preview service of tinyurl.com
This feature is not well documented at the TinyURL site, but the alternative shortened URL with preview capability is offered as an option at the time of creation.[3]
The site must have been updated as there is now a link and explanation when the url is created along with a side menu link to take you directly to the preview service on the tinyurl site.  It is now possible to have the default action of the shortened url to take you to the preview page rather than directly to the linked page.  There is explanation that cookies must enabled for some forms of the preview function to work but also an explanation of how to make it work if cookies are disabled.  
Thaddeus Ballantine (talk) 04:42, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Previewing in the Service Section 

message: Would an administrator be able to change the links to HTTPS?  to , http://tinyurl.com/2unsh to https://tinyurl.com/2unsh, http://tinyurl.com/wp-tinyurl to https://tinyurl.com/wp-tinyurl and finally *  to * . Thank you Jon Kolbert (talk) 19:57, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: TonyBallioni (talk) 22:21, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  HTTPS links 

message: TinyURL links do not redirect directly to the target, instead routing through VigLink (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VigLink) which sets a tracking and affiliate cookies.  Nowhere on the TinyURL page is this disclosed, and the "preview" links hide that fact.
Sources:
https://ylukem.com/blog/url-shorteners-set-ad-tracking-cookies
http://www.thesempost.com/bit-ly-viglink-quietly-adding-their-own-affiliate-cookies-on-shortened-links/ (talks about bitly, but TinyUrl uses VigLink as well)
I'll second this, primarily because they are being surreptitious about it. DracoDan82 (talk) 15:36, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Add criticism: tracking 

message: I was using tinyurl today on my phone and made a link but going to that link leads to a preview page.  There is no option to remove said preview page.  I’m unsure if this is a mobile version of the site thing or if they are rolling out a new automatic preview the link page feature but we likely should update the section about previewing the links once someone can confirm which it is. EliotWL (talk) 14:07, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  New preview function/mobile website? 

message: I've tracked down the website source, but had no luck whatsoever on finding an ISBN to cite. If anyone can lend a hand that would be amazing. Cheers. -  MountainKemono (talk) 00:04, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that magazines use ISSN. A quick search indicates that it may be 262-4079. Jmccormac (talk) 00:13, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: You're a Saint. I'll verify this in the morning and add it in. -  MountainKemono (talk) 01:27, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Scientist Citation