Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
It's a shortened URL. It counts.
Personally, I don't click shortened URLs. I'd much rather the full Youtube URL or the video embedded.
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Here is a URL for an Amazon book:
http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Sorcerers-Stone-Book-ebook/dp/B00728DYRO/ref=sr_1_2_twi_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419018274&sr=8-2&keywords=harry+potter
Now I just shortened it:
http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Sorcerers-Stone-Book-ebook/dp/B00728DYRO/
And some more:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00728DYRO/
And some more:
http://amazon.com/dp/B00728DYRO/
This last one is really short:
http://amzn.com/B00728DYRO
What are the differences between them all? Nothing... They are all
Amazon product IDs with more or less cruft bolted on. Every single url points to Amazon's servers, and gets redirected to the exact same page.
YouTube is much the same, except there aren't as many stages of cruft...
http://youtube.com and
http://youtu.be are both owned and operated by Gogle. They even explain it in the helpful guide you were already directed to...
Quote:
Well, we've just launched youtu.be as a shortener for YouTube video links -- and nothing but YouTube links -- so you can rest assured that when you see a link with this URL, you are indeed about to click on a YouTube video. (Also, because the link contains the ID of the video you're going to see, [...]
To use youtu.be manually, simply take a URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdeioVndUhs and replace the"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" with "http://youtu.be/" to get: http://youtu.be/FdeioVndUhs Plug that shorter URL into a browser, and you'll see it redirects to that video.
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So we go from:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PqJjcDHr81Y
to:
http://youtu.be/PqJjcDHr81Y
The critical aspect of this, as has been explained
several times to you already, is that the id of the shortened link equates directly to the otherwise-obscured-in-cruft product ID of the service it is dedicated to, the person clicking on the link knows exactly what they are getting. The traditional problem with URL shorteners is that they could lead anywhere on the damn internet, but this is a dedicated URL shortener.
Dedicated URL shortener != URL shortener
I am one of the odd people who knows about the Amazon equivalent service, and thus find myself cheerfully explaining this to people every time they mistake it for a regular old run-of-the-mill URL shortener, and amusingly enough have had moderators apologize to me several times over the mistake -- so I can assure you, forum policy does not forbid these dedicated shortlinks.
It is thus left to your pedantic misplaced fervor to find issues in things no reasonable person finds issues in, to throw objections
when you, you specifically, know full well that there is a difference, insisting that:
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
There are some people (like myself) that will not click on these shortcut links.
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When the reality is, you are THE. ONLY. ONE!