Last night I pooh poohed a Slashdot article talking about the frailty caused by relying on TinyURL.
Less than 12 hours after I wrote my post, TinyURL.com started returning 404 errors prompting real concern from netizens.
Steve Rubel wrote, “The thought of an evaporating TinyURL…is all more than a little bit frightening, yet fascinating.” Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about the dangers of using TinyURL and then jokingly harassed people on twitter who used TinyURL.
Everyone is missing the boat on this story. Less than 24 hours after a Slashdot article raising the alarm, the service that has been reliable for years goes down? Sounds like conspiracy to me.
Could it be that someone felt it necessary to prove a point about the dangers of TinyURL by taking the service to its knees? Or has the most unprobable outcome occurred and the long forgotten Slashdot effect finally returned? :-)