Developing applications can be interesting, entertaining and challenging - you never stop learning. Here's an example of how new features can cause new problems that can be solved with new features and so forth...
I wanted shortlinks
Often links are too long to send with microblogging services. If a user wants to publish a link, he has to use a shortlink then. For twitter users, services like tinyurl or twitturly are popular for this task. Some time ago, I added the shortlink feature to zzap. It can be used in two different ways.
The easy way is to click on 'attach shortened link' under the message field. A new input field for the (long original) link you want to publish appears. After the user clicks on the 'send' button, a shortened link of 31 characters is included in his original message.
The not so easy, but for me more useful way is to use the shortlinks for the announcement of blog entries. I'm using a ping from my blog to announce the new entry to zzap. zzap determines the (long!) original link of the blogentry, shortens it and posts a message with the headline of the article and the shortlink.
What were the reasons for shortlinks?
The reasons, why I wanted to integrate such a feature in zzap were:
- More convenience for the zzap user
- Independence from third-party services like tinyurl
- Better information for the zzap user
The last was the most important reason for me. I wanted to know, how many of my followers were interested in my blog articles, what kind of devices they are using and in what timespan my posts are 'hot'. Soon I gained some basic informations.
- A high percentage of my follwers were clicking on the shortlinks - far more than I expected!
- Headlines in english were most popular - although most of my followers are german.
- During the week, most clicks came imediately within the first minutes. At the weekend they came within two days.
- Most users are viewing my messages with a normal browser.
- However - some were using mobile phones, or the iPhone
Shortlinks causing new challenges
The last information demonstrated the growing importance of mobile internet usage. But it also showed a weakness of the shortlink features. If one clicks on the shortlink on his mobile phone he will be redirected to the original URL. And this page is normally built for normal webbrowsers. It's no fun to view such pages on a mobile. Yes, I know - the iPhone
can display them...
A new feature - again...
While I can't do much for external links, I wasn't satisfied, that my own blog anouncements aren't useful for mobile users. I thought about, what I could do to make my own blog "mobile device enabled". The good news is, that I found a solution for my favored blogging system
serendipity. Now I'm testing the ADD (Automatic Device Detection) and ACA (Automatic Content Adjustment) with this very blog. When no problems occure during normal operations, I will update my personal blog too and write a detailed manual on how to upgrade serendipity for mobile reading.
