today, i noticed for the first time that a t.co url was redirecting to a bit.ly one which finally took me to the actual url of the content i expected to get.

does it need a lot of imagination that one day we will have several of such redirects pointing from one url shortener to another until we arrive at the final destination?

especially, when you think of those little helpers that shorten any url you feed them, without making you even think about it. and as there are more than a few of them, of course one shortener will again shorten those already shortened by another. and so on.

which would cause an interesting scenario: while the big webcos try to squeeze out every millisecond of browser performance by rewriting javascript engines, compressing data, hacking html and so on, the very one fundamental part of the web aka the hyperlink is basically getting paralyzed by the (from the outset!) totally useless and flawed idea of shortening urls for one little messaging service with a bird in the logo.

neat, isn’t?