A day or three old, this news: The Libyan government has started objecting to content served by domains registered in their country. Moreover, any crackdown could (in theory) extend to content routed by way of URL shorteners that are likewise registered with .ly extensions. (As an aside, I can't help but scratch my head over what were the registrants were thinking at the time. I mean, if you want the entertainment of watching the Morality Police getting their knickers in a twist, go for .sa or .ir.)
Honestly, though, I never even bothered to look up the top-level extension's root zone before or after I'd used bit.ly to keep a tweet from running over its character allotment. Amazing, isn't it, how "useful" and "free" tend to go unquestioned when they travel as a pair? Then, too, if you're posting a link to the content on Twitter or Facebook or what-have-you, it's not like your browsing privacy is at stake, which effectively takes away one less reason to think about the transaction. Presumably, the service provider is mining and selling aggregate data, which assumption also neutralizes the suspicion over being offered a free lunch.
But, in the end, what makes this interesting--to me, at least--is how such services made a niche within the micro-climate of micro-blogging, and without a great deal of fanfare. Evolution is fascinating, no?
