I have been working with bit.ly enterprise to set in place a short URL for some of social media efforts. Bit.ly is one of a few companies that shorten URLs so that your tweets actually fit inside the 140 character limits. I have no problem with them. Bit.ly has been easy to deal with and patient while we decided if we were going down this road. My problem is with the company that I registered the short URL with.
It has been 10 days and apparently our short URL is still awaiting approval. Maybe it is because it is an international URL, maybe it has to do with the country code we went with, who knows. I do know that even in a world where patience is not a forgotten virtue that 10 days for a domain name registration is an extremely long time. But in this 24/7 tweet-by-the-minute world 10 days is a very long time. Some of the things that can happen in 10 days: puppies open their eyes, Kate Hudson can lose a guy and Microsoft can kill one of their phone projects.
You might think, “what is this guy griping about, 10 days isn’t so bad.” and for almost everything offline I would whole heartedly agree. When I order computers I know unless I am picking them up in a store I will have to wait for them to be shipped. The same for any other equipment I order. I understand this and my brain can comprehend a physical good traveling from one location to another. Travel takes time, I get that. But we are talking about 1s & 0s here. Going from one computer to another, there is no physical manifestation.
Adding to the frustration is the lack of information. This is the statement I see regarding pending approval
“PENDING APPROVAL Your domain registration request has been processed and is currently pending approval.“
What does that even mean? Who has to approve it, where in the approval process is it. If my registration has been processed what is pending approval. I see more information about a process when I swipe my debit card at the grocery store then about the process of international domain approval. Let me know up front that due to political climates around the world some country codes might take longer than others, or the entire process will take 10-14 days and then spell out the approval process steps.
Right now I’m feeling like a mushroom, sitting in the dark, being feed BS and waiting to be picked.
