Are URL’s Dead?
on 03.26.08, 09:08am in software, weblog • share on facebook • comments (7)
[Cabel Sasser] Within minutes of riding on the first trains in Japan, I notice a significant change in advertising, from train to television. The trend? No more printed URL’s. The replacement? Search boxes! With recommended search terms! .. It makes sense, right? All the good domain names are gone. Getting people to a specific page in a big site is difficult (who’s going to write down anything after the first slash?). And, most tellingly, I see increasingly more users already inadvertently put complete domain names like “gmail” and “netflix” into the Search box of their browsers out of habit — and it doesn’t even register that Google pops up and they have to click to get to their destination.
Wild. Like Cabel, I think this is inevitable.
So it goes.
Ken Sadahiro (March 26, 2008 @ 10:58 am)
Yeah, and QR codes have been in widespread use in the Japanese mobile market. Take a picture of it with the camera on your phone, press a button and boom – you’re so there. Having to key in a URL on your smartphone is quite cumbersome… That’s why I currently use a phone with a keyboard, but it’d be nice if I didn’t have to use it.
QR codes, btw, are *just* picking up here in the US. Can’t wait for this to be more widespread.
Steve (March 26, 2008 @ 11:36 am)
I dont think QR codes will take off in the US. It’s too akin to the CueCat.
ssge (March 26, 2008 @ 11:54 am)
Or voice recognition instead of the camera…
Franci Penov (March 26, 2008 @ 4:37 pm)
The set of reasonably short search terms is inherenlty smaller than the set of all possible destinations. Besides, a search term is a short-term leased commodity which companies do not own and can’t rely it will always point to their web properties. (Especially when the algorithm for mapping the search terms to the destinations is opaque and controlled by one company’s monetary interests)
Nevertheless, it is an interesting trend.
Tell Dodo (March 27, 2008 @ 5:22 pm)
I created telldodo.com to serve exactly this purpose: replace URLs with easy to remember, easy to pronounce, easy to spell UNIQUE keywords. Perhaps I should hook up with someone in Japan to create a Japanese version of telldodo. Let me know if you have an interest in developing this idea…
Ken Sadahiro (March 27, 2008 @ 11:32 pm)
> I dont think QR codes will take off in the US. It’s too akin to the CueCat.
Hmmm, not so sure. CueCat required that people get the silly barcode reader and install drivers, which didn’t always work. Mine surely didn’t. I threw it away after 1 hour.
When used with a mobile device, QR Codes work with the existing camera on your mobile phone – today, you just need the right app for it, like this:
http://www.pocketpcfreeware.mobi/download-i-nigma-barcode-reader-v1-4.html
Perhaps mobile operators will catch on to this trend…
http://harper.wirelessink.com/2006/03/29/mainstream-america-is-ready-for-bar-codes-converging-realspace-and-mobilespace
This is an interesting discussion too:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=335811
Franci said:
> Besides, a search term is a short-term leased commodity which companies do not own and can’t rely it will always point to their web properties.
QR codes won’t have that problem, unless the URL contains HTTP GET parameters and the content provider fails to support that over time. But that’s for the content provider to figure out.
I tried some of the URLs mentioned in the blog entry you referenced. Some of them just directed me to a Google search results page. So it fell short by one click – and that may be one click too many.
Shane (April 14, 2008 @ 8:37 am)
I put gmail, google, amazon etc always into my address bar without the .com etc, because I use FireFox and it will open the page up for me via googles I’m feelings lucky if the result is good enough.