Shortening URLs, Creating Categories: All in a Day's Work at #propeller »
Posted By tdrapeau 5 months, 1 week ago in News
I wanted to let you know about a few additions to the Propeller web site today, designed to better serve our community. The first affects the URLs that are added to our Facebook and Twitter share feature. Up until now, we have been using the TinyURL shortening service to encode Propeller story links to better fit into the message length restrictions of Twitter. As of today, we are using our own URL shortening service, which uses the domain http://pplr.us.
The pplr.us service is different from TinyURL and other shortening services in that pplr.us links will only point to Propeller story pages (we may extend this beyond Propeller story pages in the future.) For those who have used our Facebook or Twitter share already, this change will be fairly transparent--you will notice that the links that end up in your Facebook/Twitter feed have the new pplr.us domain. Beyond that, nothing has changed with story sharing.
Additionally, thanks to a great suggestion by a relative newcomer to the Propeller community btatman22, we now have 2 separate Politics categories: Political News and Political Opinion. Since its initial launch 3+ years ago, the Propeller community has been interested in both the play-by-play and the color commentary of politics. Adding this new category will help distinguish between news reporting and opinion, and (we hope) reduce any related confusion. All existing Politics posts now appear in the Political News category, so that old links can be preserved, and the Political Opinion category is now open for business--members, please begin to use it for your opinion posts.
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tdrapeau
Tom Drapeau is the Director of Propeller social news. He enjoys all manner of geekery and internet foolishness. He has seen every episode of Battlestar ...
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TimALoftis5 months, 1 week ago
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Great idea. Well over 75% of the political pieces submitted to Propeller are really OpEd or opinion pieces. I like the idea that we now have the ability to separate them from mainstream media pieces concerning 'politics'
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Now if we can do something with the 'News' category. I like reading and submitting news stories that many consider to be Strange, Odd or Weird. Would love to see a category for these types of submissions.
thanks as always -
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BronxBomber5 months, 1 week ago
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"Political News and Political Opinion" Hmmmm... sounds good, but I somehow can see the 4th of July type fireworks in the threads that will abound eventually between the two major political GOP parties.
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How about adding "Political Humor"? Oh that's right! We'll provide that. -
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gamahuche5 months, 1 week ago
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The first change would be more potent if it DID include the possibility to shorten external addresses too.
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Recently I had to abandon a story half-cooked because I couldn't get a websiteaddress to register - and had temporarily forgotten about tinyURL.
RE the second matter - I like that too - as long as btatman does not seek a monopoly on either category.
I also notice that right now there is a slot vacant opposite News!
I would like to see a Spirit category - I think it would be great to have a category which offers a home to stories which "raise people's spirits", without having a religious aspect..
I've been thinking of removing myself as much as possible from the never-ending brawling between the propeller factions and concentrating only on this type of input - plus some Czech stories, of course.. -
jonydicostaComment removed: Hard Banned
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