BBC going short?

The all new BBC Backstage Idea Store allows the more geeky of BBC user to suggest things that could be done with BBC data and ways of improving existing BBC web services.

One such suggestion is asking whether the BBC should have its own short url service like TinyURL or bit.ly.

The rationale as defined by the poster (LoopZilla) says:

bit.ly, snurl, tinyurl are used by the BBC and many others.  What doesn’t the BBC have its own short URL service?

The basic concept behind it seem to be that as the BBC increasingly uses services like Twitter (and those services become popular with the BBCs audience) and other such systems that involve creating content in a minimum of characters - making shorter urls available will become more important.

there are many a move taking place within the BBC to standardise URLs introducing PIPs and codes - BBC News and Sport already have them - /programmes and iPlayer share them and the new /music uses standard codes as well.

So the question is - would it be any stretch of the imagination for the BBC to introduce its own short url service with a BBC domain name instead of using a commercial one that could do any number of things that might bring the BBC brand into distripute without warning.

Short URL services are only of any use on micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, within Facebook updates or when sending Instant Messages.

Other than that you’d be just as well using the full URL. I mean on a blog you’d (in the post or in the comments) you could just as easily create a quick link with a word or two to send someone to a website.

On this blog I offer a TinyURL version of every story - for example the post on the new Being Human series has the full URL:
http://www.upyourego.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/06/the-next-big-geeky-cult/

But can also be accessed here:
http://tinyurl.com/73sgpy

A comment from Derivadow on the Idea Store post  suggests that short urls are NOT a good thing as they break Google Juice.

URL shortning serivces are evil, because they break the web and harm your google juice. A much better soultion is to design short urls in the first instance.

I’m not sure I understand why people don’t like URLs - they are what makes the web, services that try to replace them (eg DOI) or services that provide another level of indirection and therefore a single point of failure cause fractures in the fabric of the web. Don’t do it people!

To a certain extent that makes sense - but if the story lives in one place (at the full URL) with the short URL available using the same code it will still break the Google Juice - but does it really matter for the BBC?

In fact is Google Juice REALLY that important? Surely what is equally important is getting as many people as possible to see your content - if someone sends it to their 10 thousand friends on Twitter - that would be a big boost to anybody.

It would be interesting for the BBC to offer short url’s for some of their news stories and it shouldn’t be THAT difficult really - the code to do this isn’t exactly ground breaking.

For news you could just use the same code already in place.

So the page could exist at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7814054.stm

But have an alternative URL at
http://bbc.im/n/7814054

In fact a link to an iPlayer video could exist at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00gndt1/

To:
http://bbc.im/i/b00gndt1

Dot IM is the domain for Isle of Man and is already owned by the BBC and not in active use.

The examples above use a folder like letter to show what area of the site it comes from - but if the codes are really unique that shouldn’t really be necessary.

The iPlayer example could just as easily be: http://bbc.cim/boogndt1.

If the app was built properly it could also be extended to those sites without unique codes (where the journalist writes the filename). At the time you create the story you’d also create the short code by giving it an ID (that was matched against the database to make sure it wasn’t already in use.

So this story on BBC Jersey:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/content/articles/2005/12/14/civil_partnership_feature.shtml

Could become:
http://bbc.im/jcivpart - or to make it more forumulaic could be date and creation based so http://bbc.im/09010625

Oh and the short url service I set up is gtfa.eu (get the flip away you). Oh and while you’re at it - this could be a useful plugin to install: http://www.longurlplease.com/

Related articles by Zemanta

• Bit.ly Plug-in Extends Tiny URLs, Shows Clickthrough Numbers
• Learn This: TinyUrl and Address Shortening
• Looking at linking and short urls on Twitter
• Twitter: 2009 is the year it gets big, and gets integrated
• Long URL Please Makes a Lot of Sense
• Bit.ly Gets Better with New Data…Are You Using It Yet?

Share/Save

Get the Flip Away - You

Forget del.icio.us and Digg, put Facebook and MySpace aside - the real big hitter of the new social web is TinyURL and the various clones floating around the web.

Thanks to the massive success of Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and even Twit Army (running Laconica - short URL services are in high demand.

I mean - how are you supposed to share a link with someone, given that the vast majority of sites are now using CPS systems (like Wordpress) that lead to long URLs, when the URL itself is longer than the 140 character limit.

So you can get a bit of text before the URL ShortURL services are used to … well shorten the URL. In fact every post on UpYourEgo has a short URL automatically generated on the right hand menu for that post.

And TinyURL now lets you create personalised URLs as well - I recently created one for the new Top Trumps show on five (that I wanted to post to Twitter) and was able to use tinyurl.com/toptrumpsd5 and even more recently I used tinyurl.com/deadyet for a link to a funny site about the Large Hadron Collider.

The problem with this though is that all the useful urls will be gone pretty quickly and then you’ll be left with a selection of choices that may as well just be random.

There is also the chance that 1) the site hosting the URL could give up, get bored, shut down or go out of business and 2) they could start charging for custom URLs or even random ones (although this is unlikely as people don’t like paying for things on the web).

Recently, during a debate on the merits of microblogging - Leo Laporte, one of the hardest working men in the world of online video streaming, suggested that as sites like Twitter grow to a point of unsustainability - it would be better to host communities around a product/idea/service or brand and have them all linked together.

So he launched Twit Army - this is for fans of the Twit Network to use as their social networking service and I believe your posts can also be published on Twitter.

So, using the GNU licenced Laconica software I could set up my own microblogging platform at nuts.upyourego.com that automatically re-posted to Twitter and everywhere else - as well as letting users of the EgoNuts platform communicate in a more specialised environment.

I’m not going to because, my theory is that about 3% of the readers of a blog or listeners of a podcast would actually join an associated community - in which case that would probably be me and my dad.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t played with the idea of a Microblogging platform - I recently launched JerseyGuardian.co.uk - a simple microblogging site for people in Jersey to post what is on their mind right now - using Wordpress as a platform.

I’ll write a post specifically about this another time as it requires more explanation than a couple of paragraphs I’m giving it here - but check it out and let me know what you think.

What I have done is launched my own ShortURL site at gtfa.eu or Get the Flip (yes Flip!) Away - You.

It’s a pretty simple interface - you put your long URL in the top box, enter a word (or not - you don’t have to) and click generate.

Underneath it will give you a short url - either to your specification or as a random sequence of numbers - your choice really.

I might develop it more (it’s using some of the shelf code I found online) but as it does what I wanted it to do - I’m happy leaving it as is right now - although I’ll probably replace TinyURL with GTFA on the right hand side shortURL box on this site.

I’d love your feedback.

Share/Save