The new wave of self-shorteners
So, my previous bit on the attraction of shortening one’s own URLs seems to have some traction. Obviously it wasn’t original to me, but I see that sites like Ars Technica and Flickr have begun doing their own URL shortening. Check it out:
I had a similar notion a few weeks ago. In addition to shortening one’s own URLs, one might even use a shorter domain name that evokes the full name. So I registered CLPRHO.US and clipperhou.se. Haven’t started using them yet — I was concerned that they may look spammy since they are unfamiliar. But then again, pretty much all the URL shorteners look spammy.
I also learned that others are thinking about this, using devices like rel=canonical to allow these things to be discovered by others.