Joshua Schachter has written an article about The Great Linkrot Apocalypse related to the use of URL shortening services (TinyURL.com, twhirl.nl, bit.ly, snurl.com, is.gd, digg.com, etc.). Chris Shiflett along with several others are actively discussing proposals such as A rev=”canonical” HTTP Header that a site publisher can use to specify their own recommended short URL, rather than rely on a 3rd party service.

Sites like PHP.net and Flickr have already added support for many of the ideas discussed. But what is really required is that there be more adoption by blogs, social network sites like twitter and identi.ca, and applications like twhirl and tweetdeck.

To that end there is already a WordPress plugin called Shorter Links, which having installed it here works very nicely and I assume the author will continue to track the developments in this space. There is also a tool to test self-published shortened URLs.

One can also follow the twitter discussion thread about #revcanonical.