I almost never use URL shorteners except on Twitter. I like seeing the domain that a link is originating from, and as long as character count is not an issue as it is for Twitter or SMS, I do not want to click on a shortened URL and take the chance that it is not what it is advertised to be. I really like that TweetDeck gives you the chance to see the long version of the shortened URLs, and that FriendFeed expands the URLs for its feed. Sorry. Just paranoid, I guess.
So the closing of Tr.im won’t affect me much, if at all. Most of the shortened URLs I’ve used on Twitter, regardless of the shortener, are links to time-sensitive news stories and will probably expire within a few months even if I had used the full URL.
This did, however, make me think about linkage in general. It led me to backup my Delicious.com bookmarks, which I have not done in a very long time. I also scheduled some time to check my blogs and journals for dead linkage.
Of course, the big social media news of the day was that of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. I’m still deciding what I think of that, probably because I don’t use either Facebook or FriendFeed to best advantage.
I am so sick of all the games and apps on Facebook, mostly the fact that game scores and quiz results are considered “news” for the news feed, that Facebook is mostly unusable to me. By the way, if you are a Facebook friend and have actually posted real news or better yet, photos, you might want to go old-school and email me or call me so I know that it’s worth digging through the so-called “news” to find whatever you’ve posted!
I joined FriendFeed a while back, but I haven’t quite figured out how it fits into my what-I-do online. Same with Ping.fm. I don’t currently use the social aspect of Delicious.com at all right now. I use it simply to make my most-used bookmarks available to me at any location. I suppose I should look into the sharing and social aspect as well. I guess I should take some time to update my social media social life in general. Talk about demented and sad, but social, huh?
(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 10 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 198 of 274)