It was a fun experience to put this event together. It was very spontaneous and casual.
We used kiw.is, a domain I had registered a few weeks ago because it was a fun name, and decided to use it for the web address and name.
We wanted an idea that could have some use to it, and also be done in a day. The technology used was all very simple, robust, secure, and well supported. All those factors made it easy. We thought up making a prestitial kind of page for people to add messages to a link that were completely customizable. Without needing to rely on messages inline with a link, such as twitter, users can now attach messages right before the actual page. Not a new idea in general, but new for this specific application of it.
It's currently in beta invite, and for the Hacker News community we made a few for you guys to try it out:
My first reaction to kiw.is was "okay, this is pretty obnoxious for me as the link-follower," but after a little bit of thought it occurred to me that something like this would actually be perfect for links to anything that is potentially NSFW or sensitive. I think if you played up that angle and then furthermore became known for it, the service might actually be a good "second-favorite URL shortener."
yeah, the big differentiator here isn't just the short url and name, but that extra message you can give, either a warning a funny inspirational image, or your own comment.
I used it recently to link to a photographer's portfolio, noting the pictures I really enjoyed. I could send this across any medium and know that as it's shared, people will see this message.
We used kiw.is, a domain I had registered a few weeks ago because it was a fun name, and decided to use it for the web address and name.
We wanted an idea that could have some use to it, and also be done in a day. The technology used was all very simple, robust, secure, and well supported. All those factors made it easy. We thought up making a prestitial kind of page for people to add messages to a link that were completely customizable. Without needing to rely on messages inline with a link, such as twitter, users can now attach messages right before the actual page. Not a new idea in general, but new for this specific application of it.
It's currently in beta invite, and for the Hacker News community we made a few for you guys to try it out:
Beta Invite Code: hackernews09