I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I worry about obfuscated links in my tweets. I include the actual, un-shortened URL when I can and don’t worry about it much when I can’t. Query strings and stuffed permalinks will get most links auto-shortened anyway — twitter shortens anything longer than 30 characters regardless of preference.

I’d probably care more if I dropped links to my blogging into twitter. The idea of pushing masked links to my own thing just strikes me as dirty. Like self-seeding Reddit. (No offense to those of you who do that — your posts are probably more awesome than mine) Or rickrolling pals. But, without the humor.

Regardless of my personal use, though, I think it’s time we get our permalinks shorter than 30 characters. We could even keep the out-of-control keyword stuffing in place for search engine indexing and just 301 the short ones to the longer ones. In other words, this post could be http://aaronmentele.com/p/793 and everyone on twitter would know if I was link spamming my own stuff. Google, though, would see it at http://aaronmentele.com/2009/07/17/shorter-urls/ and give me a sooper rank on the phrase.

We could all push whatever we wanted and not feel dirty. Our clients could link to themselves and reinforce their TLDs without loosing search traffic. Nobody would be left guessing.

It took two lines in the .htaccess file to do it here and on the EP site.

RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^p/([0-9]+)/?$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/?p=$1 [R=301,L]

I’m sure there are WordPress plugins available to do the same thing if you hate htaccess files, but you get the general idea. Most CMS apps have rewrites in place, and there’s no reason you can’t create a second rule.

I’d love to hear if anyone has a better idea. But you don’t have to look far to see there are other reasons to get URL management figured out. Right?

UPDATE: I see now that Zeldman has a recent post on the topic. At quick glance, the plugin he’s using seems to require manual set up for each link, and that’s probably more additional effort than I’m willing to give my modest posts. Also, I realize this whole idea isn’t new idea or unique. I’m sure smarter people than me have said these things long ago. And, finally, thanks to Michael for straightening me out on the rewrite above. That was embarrassing.

My last post mentioned Umair Haque’s recent rage against old people who ruin the world. He’d like to break up with them (and their ways.) Actually, he suggests we’d like to break up with them. And when you read Umair, like I hope you do, you want to be part of the we.

But, when Umair came into my feed reader suggesting we all want change, I’d just been considering the extent to which it might really suck.

Maybe you noticed last week’s agency shakeups. Or people announcing new freelancing plans or news of their layoff. Without calling anyone out, we’ll just say things are changing for a lot of people who do what I do. Most of that change hasn’t come by choice.

When I see it, I say “congrats” out loud but think “ack” in my head. Some of these [people] have mortgages and leases and loans and personal guarantees. Some have spouses and children and/or employees with spouses and children. And some just really enjoyed their job.

The thing that got me writing on the topic (before Umair got in my head and started clowning about) was the fact that I’ve suggested the current economic downturn wouldn’t affect skilled web shops, long term. There’s simply too much need for what we do for the world to go without.

The suck of it is that being able to think long term is a bit of a luxury, regardless of your skill or talent. That’s why recession-proofing articles are crap. You don’t make it through a downturn by reducing costs or shedding commitments — those things just make it easier on you if you fail. You make it through a downturn by continuing to find and do good work. And that’s something that gets easier as your business gets more established.

So, I feel a little bad about suggesting talented web pros would be fine. Clearly, some are getting kicked in the nuts. The pain of which grows with commitments to mortgages and leases and loans and personal guarantees et cetera.

For what it’s worth, though, I really do think the wider view looks good. Those announcing moves will jump to a new shop and grow. Those who stick it out will find the bounce probably makes up for short term stress. And those who had no business building web things in the first place will go work retail. As per usual.

Anyway… good luck to those of you moving to new jobs or cities. I hope the excitement outweighs the stress.