Personal link shortening and tracking

<RANT>

Is it really required to use link shortening services everywhere? In twitter or other places where space is premium – sure, I’m happy. But where it doesn’t matter, the only reason they are being used is so that the publisher of the advice about the endpoint can track the number of clicks that they are getting.

I’m not particularly happy about this sort of tracking. To the extent I’ll use a search engine to find the content rather than click the link. Also I’d prefer not to click on the link if it’s just going to take me to a press release – which is obvious when you see the URL, but not so much when it’s hidden by a click counter (oh I mean link shortening service).

Perhaps I should just get over it and let those people who want to crow over the number of clicks their posts are getting get high on their own self importance. I’d rather just share than worry about that and that should be enough.

</RANT>