Talking Short URLs with Zack from Nieman Lab

Zack Seward from Harvard’s Neiman Journalism Lab and I talked about URL shorteners yesterday – and the responsibility of publishers to shorten themselves…

“The really, really big benefit in that case is that it’s no longer a redirect…”

…and the additional opportunity for a focused, curated, short URL service….

“he raised an idea that’s been bouncing around in my head since I hung up the phone: What if a short URL were static, but the page it pointed to wasn’t?

You could change the redirect to whatever is catching your interest at the moment or, say, randomly selected links from Andy Baio.

There’d be elements of mystery and serendipity, like flipping the pages of a great magazine, and devotion might center around the URL itself..”

Big thanks to Karl at MinnPost for connecting us.