tinyurl

[augusto]

Now and then I've noticed my Zone Alarm blocking 'tinyurl.com'. I found their website, it seems harmless and I now vaguely understand that they make urls tinier. In a thread today, I noticed an agent's sales touted on a tinyurl link. What have I been missing with these being blocked? (And don't tell me to lose Zone Alarm because I already have.) Is this some secret way agents convey offers of representation? That would explain a lot...

 

[Matera the Mad]

tinyurl is god's gift to forums. When you have a long link and don't know how to click the button that hides it in code wrapped around a meaningful word or phrase, you can go to tinyurl and paste in your link and then get a little short one that you can go back and paste into your post so it doesn't make the page ten miles wide. For instance, this thread is http://tinyurl.com/ykymorl For some reason that roundabout process is less complicated for some people. Well, there are other uses for shortened URLs...lol...there should be something like it for sentences like my second one.

 

[Maryn]

I also like tinyurl for a link who real name gives away its content when it's supposed to be a joke or a surprised. Far better to send someone to http://tinyurl.com/abcdedf than to http://rickrolled.com. (Edit: Not real links, so don't bother.)

And, as Matera said, it's great for not making an entire thread have to scroll from let to right because of one crazy-long link in a single post.

Maryn, who wouldn't really rickroll anybody

 

[Kathleen42]

I use it for Twitter. Since tweets can only be 140 characters, tinyurl makes it possible to share links and still have enough space in your message to provide a context.

 

[augusto]

Thank you all for the education. I'm still wondering what was being blocked by my spyware. Do you suppose they were emails including tinyurls or websites I had tried to reach? My ignorance here staggers even me...

 

[Kathleen42]

Thank you all for the education. I'm still wondering what was being blocked by my spyware. Do you suppose they were emails including tinyurls or websites I had tried to reach? My ignorance here staggers even me...

I wonder if someone could have been using tinyurl to direct you to a site which had spyware or flagged content. The downside of tinyurl is that you don't really know where you're going.