TinyURL went down the other day.

Thankfully they had a workaround (add a. to the start of the URL), but it's a reminder, especially in these days of Twitter, how much we've come to depend on it.

What happens if one day Kevin Gilbertson goes crazy and shuts it down? Or some other disaster befalls it? How many people have things recorded as TinyURLs that they couldn't get back?

Don't get me wrong, there's no reason to assume the worst. But for many it does represent a single point of failure.