They’re messing around with some food … the one lady is saying something about ingredients … one of the guys is wearing a hat and talking to the camera …

It’s swine flu season, and JR asks an important question:

I’m taking a take home epidemiology exam, and question 9 asks “discuss how Twitter reduces the potential for a pandemic.”

Is there some way your new service could help with this?

Happy to oblige, JR. In the event of a pandemic, apply twitter directly to your respiratory system. Make sure all your twitter links are created with urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com, or else your lungs will panic when they see bit.ly and tr.im and is.gd links tumbling down your trachea like exploded spelling bees. Keep calm, drink plenty of red wine. The end.

Your grade on your home epidemiology exam is now: 100% A+. You are officially a doctor!

 

Reader JF writes:

This is the cover of an audiobook called “Server Down”, but I think it could be put to better use illustrating the dangers of using anything but urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com when sharing links with a senior citizen:

“Hey, Grandma, did you ever get the recipe for razzleberry pie I tweeted at you?”
“No, dear, no I didn’t. I guess… the server was down…”

Of course, the server wasn’t down, but she interpreted the bizarre jumble of letters and numbers and dots and whatnot provided by a conventional shortening service as an error, because it was incoherent.

Exactly. You can’t tell me this doesn’t look like the result of an exploded server:

http://bit.ly/irMFm

“Say what? A bunch of wet, greasy squirrels are nesting inside the computer server and now it’s spitting out random-looking sequences of characters?”

On the other hand, check this out:

http://urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com/x0qzh

“Ah, an internet link! I simply must click on it!”

Game. Set. Match.

Let’s get short!

Gig tonight at UCB!

Gig Saturday at Open Space!

Don’t forget.

People have asked if I’m doing any URL-shortening jokes. Alas, no. I’m doing lottery-related jokes.

Reader JT thinks we’re making fun of senior citizens:

Now sonny I am getting complaints from the elders like myself who I “hipped” to your site a while back, saying that you are “dissing” us…. So can you lay off the hate just a while now until we all pass, or at least type in high frequency fonts so we can’t hear it.

THIS IS NOT A JOKE! Urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com is a fully functional URL shortening service. If you don’t believe me, click here. My webmaster made it using “PHP” code or something, I don’t understand how exactly, but it works!

Believe me, “Old people don’t understand the internet” is the lamest kind of humor, a full 3 steps below “White people do stuff like n and black people do those same things like n-prime (where n = “this” and n-prime = “that”).

We’re not trying to make you laugh, or chuckle, or chortle. We’re trying to provide you with a URL shortening service for twitter that works … that makes intuitive sense … whose URL isn’t trying to be all intimidating and esoteric like other such service (cough, cough bit.ly … cough, cough is.gd)…

If you think this whole thing is a big joke, how do you explain that we already have 120 followers on twitter??? THINK ABOUT IT. Then shorten some URLs!!!

“Let’s get short!”

A poignant email from VM:

I only wish my parents would have lived to see it.

Don’t worry, VM … they’re using it. In heaven.

http://urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com/79rmf

This SeniorJournal.com article from January says senior citizens don’t like social networking sites:

Just 7 out of every 100 senior citizens – Americans age 65 or older – have a profile on an online social network – well below the 35 percent of all adult internet users …

No surprise there: Why would senior citizens sign up for twitter, if they’re going to be barraged by intimidating bit.ly links? (If there are other social networking sites, I’m not aware of them. I don’t have time to poke around the internet all day; I’m trying to solve problems.)

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to watch the percentage of seniors using twitter rise over the next few months as more seniors learn of urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com.

Have you told your grandmother about us?

The movement has started … I have received more than five four emails from readers who are excited about my latest venture! (And again, many thanks to webmaster and professional computer programmer Paul Charles Leddy for all his help … Paul, you are truly the king of URL shorteners.)

Anyway, reader AA hits all the hot-button references for this new age of URL shortening:

holy shit it’s about time you expanded your empire from being the hottest blogger around to being the hottest url shortening device for the twitter machine around. finally we’ll all have time to finish our metamucil before murder she wrote ends so we can go look for our bifocals and finish reading that letter to the editor we wrote about how we don’t want the government messing with our medicare!

Reader MC sings our praises:

I am ultra-excited about URL Shorteners LLC … amidst the explosion of lookalike “me-too” URL-shortening services, I am refreshed to see a newcomer that stands out from the crowd.

Exactly! He gets it.

Think about it: Most URL shorteners are just too short and plain’ ol’ BORING to be memorable:

http://bit.ly
http://tr.im
http://is.gd

Yawn … half those those things aren’t even real words… “is.gd?” hello, that sounds like Aztec gobbledygook … but what’s this? … a new kid on the scene … turning heads …

http://urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com

Finally, a URL-shortening-service URL you can pronounce! Made of real words everyone can pronounce!

Feel the change … it’s coming … time for me to eat some ice cream …

Change is coming to the internet … at long last … urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com’s twitter page is now at 75 members! I might hold an emergency ice cream party to mark the occasion!

If we can get 100 followers by the end of the week, I think we can all agree that it would have been the most dramatic surge in twitter followers in any twitter account in history. (I think the grammar got a little tangled back there, but I’m excited– I don’t have time to bust out Skrunk & White and make sure I’m typing words correctly…)

Ice cream party!

Please tell your grandparents to follow us! Please spread the word to all the members of your local Matlock Fan Club (LOL, Matlock jokes never get old … just like Matlock fans [because they’re already as old as possible].)

It’s called urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com, and it’s changing the way people link to stuff on twitter!

If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all the latest news re: urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com (the hottest new URL shortening service for twitter), you can follow us here.

We’re at 40 followers and going strong! Thanks to all beta-testers and senior citizens!

www.urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com … change is coming to the internet …

Let’s get short!